Worlds Apart
by Bioterrorist
Summary: Crossover.  Gundam Wing meets Naruto.  Duo and Naruto swap minds.  Now it comes down to ninja vs technology.  How can this go wrong?  Start counting.  Get a calculator.


Worlds Apart

Reposted for Mieren

(Explanation in Bio)

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Naruto Uzumaki was not a happy camper. In all of his infinite compassion and wisdom, Kakashi had sent Team Seven into the Forest of Death to train. That in itself wouldn't have been so horribly bad but for the fact that the man, in a moment of sheer sadistic evilness, had waited until the skies had started to pour down freezing rain to send them out. A layer of ice was forming on the trees and ground, making the dangerous area downright deadly. Shivering violently, Naruto was already devising ways to make the silver-haired jounin suffer, mollifying himself with visions of paper clips, feminine products and four hundred pounds of flour. Over the three years he'd studied under Kakashi, he'd become damn creative and more than a little vindictive.

Unfortunately, the vengeful plotting distracted Naruto from what he was supposed to be doing. Absorbed in his thoughts, he didn't notice a tripwire until he'd hooked his ankle around it, setting off dozens of exploding tags and a single blood-streaked scroll. Panicking, he teleported to escape the blast, vanishing in a cloud of smoke just as the shockwave hit him. Something within him jarred painfully and he lost consciousness.

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It was not Duo Maxwell's day. He'd been sent on what was virtually a suicide mission out in the middle of freaking nowhere to destroy a suspected arsenal of mobile suits. Much to his dismay, he learned quickly upon arrival that the anonymous tip had been partially accurate, leaving him alone against more than a thousand suits. The problem was that they hadn't been informed that the things would be occupied. Gundam or no Gundam, he was boned.

"Screw this," Duo muttered, yanking open a control panel. He fiddled with the wires expertly, altering the feed to his thermal scythe. If he was going to die, he was going to do so in the midst of a massacre. Closing his eyes, he punched a command into the keyboard.

Air whipped by him at physically damaging speeds as Deathscythe ejected him in a predetermined sequence, still strapped into his seat. Duo could feel gravity reverse as he headed back towards the ground, his stomach rising into his throat. He didn't dare open his eyes, not wanting to watch as he plummeted back to Earth, protected only by an altimeter fitted to the parachute built into his chair. The oversized chute would violently unfurl at one hundred and fifty feet above the ground, slowing him down almost instantly at trauma-inducing speeds but hopefully preventing the fall from becoming lethal. He didn't want to be in the air for any length of time as a target, but he didn't fancy the idea of becoming a human pizza either.

A massive jerk almost ripped him from his protective strapping and knocked the breath from his lungs. Despite himself, his eyes snapped open just in time to see the ground rushing up to meet him. And a blast of energy slam into him from his self-destructed Gundam.

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Naruto woke up, feeling extremely disoriented and nauseated. He blinked slowly focusing eyes up at a half rotted wooded ceiling, pushing a little at the heavy blankets wrapped around him. Immediately, he heard movement beside him.

"I think he's awake!" a soft caring voice chimed. Naruto frowned. The voice was too gentle to be Sakura and didn't stammer enough to be Hinata. Who was she?

"About time," someone muttered darkly in a flat tone. "Get up, baka."

Ah, Naruto thought gleefully, that had to be Sasuke. Rolling his head to the side, he discovered three things instantly. One, the person calling him an idiot wasn't Sasuke, but a cobalt eyed brunette he didn't recognize. Two, the woman with a sweet voice was a blond boy, very feminine looking, but definitely male. And three, something was grossly wrong with his hair. His hand flew to the back of his head and he gripped a long plaited mass of hair. He pulled it around to look at it. It was a braid, easily three feet long and anything but his natural hair color, a honey gold brunette where he was used to a sunny blond.

"Your braid is fine, baka," a new voice said, condescending and cold. Naruto glanced over at an Asian boy with his arms folded across his chest. Confused and nervous, he asked a neutral question, trying not to give away his vulnerable position.

"Where am I?" Naruto asked carefully.

"We're in a safe house," the sweet blond said, cutting the other two off from sniping answers.

That didn't help. "How did I get here?" Naruto tried again.

"Trowa brought you here after you self-destructed Deathscythe," the blond answered.

Self-destruct? Deathscythe? Naruto stalled, completely baffled and out of his league. They obviously expected him to know what they were talking about, so he nodded placidly.

Deciding that the obscure line of questioning was safe to continue, he plowed forward. He wanted information, but he was smart enough not to give himself away to potentially dangerous strangers. The boy with cobalt eyes was rather disturbing.

"How long have we been here?"

"Don't worry, Duo. You've only been unconscious for a few hours," the blond soothed.

Naruto nodded again. So they thought he was someone named 'Duo' did they? Considering the braid still in his hands, he wasn't overly surprised. Somewhere along the way, a jutsu must have gone wrong. He wasn't entirely sure what all that entailed yet, but he was aware that he looked like someone else. Who the other people were, he didn't know, but they thought they knew him. Sensing eyes on him, he looked up, worried when he saw that the two more unsettling boys in the room were eyeing him suspiciously. He had done something wrong and attracted their attention.

Naruto was saved from figuring out what he had done wrong when a fourth boy entered the room. The newcomer had a hairstyle as impossible as Kakashi's, brunette hair falling determinedly into impressive bangs that obscured half of his face.

"Oz has found us. We need to leave," Bangs said succinctly. The other three nodded and fell into a set pattern to evacuate.

Baffled, Naruto swung out of the bed, momentarily glancing at his black clothes. The more he heard and saw, the worse he was confused. Now he had something or someone called 'Oz' to add to his ever-growing list of things he didn't understand. Where was he?

The Asian boy grabbed his elbow and forcibly helped him stand. Naruto allowed himself to be dragged, still not knowing what to do.

"My bike is out front," the raven-haired boy said tersely. "Are you well enough to ride?"

Ride a bike? He had seen bicycles and he knew how to ride one, but he didn't know why they would want him to do such a thing. He could run faster. Besides, he didn't know where he was or where he was supposed to go.

Flustered, Naruto went for a universal excuse that should get him out of almost anything involving coordination or memory.

"No," he answered slowly. "I think I have a concussion." That should cover everything.

"Are you ever _not_ in the way?" the oriental boy snapped.

"You can ride with me," the blond offered before Naruto could respond irately. Naruto tried to calm down and settled for an incensed huff. He only belatedly realized that he might be blowing his cover and was relieved to note that no one seemed suspicious of his temperamental behavior. Apparently Duo was a high-strung individual as well.

Still not sure if he was in entirely friendly hands, he kept his trap shut and pointedly ignored whatever else they had to say to him, letting the insults from the two of the touchier boys pass over him. He was tuning them out so fully as they walked that he missed a question aimed at him.

"Baka!" the cobalt-eyed boy growled. "Pay attention for once. Did you or did you not destroy the base?"

Naruto almost missed a step. Shit. More things he didn't know that he was apparently supposed to. All four of the other teenagers were staring at him as his jaw worked.

"I don't remember," he stammered.

"Could you be any stupider?" the oriental boy sighed.

Before Naruto could begin yelling at him or the blond could try to diffuse the upcoming fight, they reached a place outside that was previously not visible while traveling. Naruto's eyes lifted up, and up, until he could fully take in the metal monstrosities in front of him. Instincts and training kicked in and he lunged back, reaching for a kunai that wasn't there.

"What the fuck are those?" Naruto yelped. He was instantly faced with four similar hand-held metal instruments that he didn't recognize either. The things were blunt but he received the distinct impression from the grim looks on the other boys' faces that they were extremely dangerous. He raised his hands in surrender. "Concussion?" he offered helplessly.

"He's lying," the blond stated, suddenly turning on him. Naruto gaped, not understanding the sudden change in attitude towards him from the one that he had targeted as the most friendly and trusting of the lot.

"Who are you?" the cobalt-eyed boy demanded, shoving the metal device against Naruto's forehead. His thumb pulled back something that clicked. Naruto decided that it was not a good noise.

"My name is Naruto Uzumaki," he said quickly, wary of the unknown weapon. "I woke up and you had me. I'm just trying to figure out where I am and how to get home."

"Why didn't you say anything?" the blond asked, seeming to calm down again. At the very least, he had put away his weapon. Naruto would have given him a flat look had he been able.

"Because you seemed to know me and I didn't want _this_ to happen if I said something!" he answered irately, jerking his eyes upwards to the weapon jammed to his forehead threateningly. He was preparing to vanish with the Replacement Technique when the weapon was suddenly lowered.

"Fine," the cobalt-eyed boy said, voice sounding strained. "But you're staying with us. You can't leave after what you've seen."

"Okay," Naruto agreed hesitantly. He'd submit to being a hostage temporarily if he got answers.

The cobalt-eyed brunette stalked off towards one of the huge metal… things. He slowed to hiss something to the blond, so softly that Naruto was sure he hadn't been supposed to hear what he had said. His hearing was so acute that he heard the question anyways.

"You said he might have other personalities similar to Shinigami. Is this one of them?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

Naruto blinked bemusedly. Who were these people? Did they really still think he was Duo? Or was Duo just completely nuts and no one could tell the difference? Not entirely sure what to think about his so-called captors, he started after the blond, watching discretely as the other two boys followed him with their odd weapons for a few seconds before putting them away as well. He didn't really like approaching the huge metal… whatever it was… but since the blond didn't seem worried, he tried to follow the example. If the weaker boy wasn't scared of it, then he decided that he shouldn't be either.

Naruto watched the others fan out towards the enormous… things. He couldn't help staring when one by one they hissed and small openings formed in about the middle of what looked like oversized suits of armor. His eyes became huge. Surely they weren't going to _ride_ in those things?

A line lowered from the towering figures they were nearest. The small blond snagged the line with one hand, reaching out for Naruto with the other. He approached with caution, gripping the line delicately and eyeing a small platform the blonde's feet were placed on. Naruto eyed the small foothold skeptically.

"And it goes back up?" he asked.

"Yes, D… Naruto," the blond said indulgently. Naruto tugged at the line to check if it was secure. The blond sighed. "It's fine."

Naruto grunted, not liking the idea of being dragged up into the metal suit. Muttering a curse, he leapt for the line and drew himself higher in a hand-over-hand technique. He was over halfway up the climb when he heard vulgar swearing and a rapid whining noise. He looked over at the odd sound, spotting the cold cobalt-eyed teen shooting upwards towards some sort of platform as his line retracted extremely rapidly. The brunette looked extremely mad for some reason. Even with the speed of the cable, the brunette was far behind in reaching their goal. Naruto hadn't slowed in his climbing, eager to get somewhere more stable than a moving cable. He was happy to reach the unfolded hatch and sit on it to wait for the blond to follow. Across from him, he saw the pissy-looking brunette had his weapon out again and was pointing it at him, only hesitating when he saw Naruto placidly lazing on the door, watching him quizzically. A moment later, the blond was beside him, looking worried and decidedly harassed.

"Don't do that!" the blond scolded. "And since when could you do that?"

"Since when could you not?" Naruto countered. "It's not exactly like it's hard."

The blond hesitated. "I've just never seen you do that before."

"Bah," Naruto said dismissively, more interested in peeking at the controls. He'd never seen so many buttons and levers collected in one place. He was tempted to tinker with them but kept his hands to himself. There was no telling what he would break. His brow furrowed when he noticed how small the area was. "Where do I sit?"

"Behind the chair. There are no riding straps, so you'll just have to hold on," the blond said.

Grumbling, Naruto wedged himself behind the seat, extremely cramped for space. The blond settled into the seat, strapping himself in intensely and sliding a pair of goggles onto his face. Naruto was a little worried for his safety if the other boy was taking so many precautions. When the hatch started to close, he panicked, slightly claustrophobic.

"How long will we be in here?"

"Relax," the blond said, hearing the strain in his passenger's voice. "We just need to move. We shouldn't get into any dogfights."

That didn't help his nerves. Fight? In these things? The situation got infinitely worse when the engines kicked on and the monitors flickered awake, showing proof that the huge machine was lifting off the ground. Full-fledged panic set in and he did what came naturally to him when his life was threatened. He reached for Kyuubi…and found nothing.

The monitors showed that they were above cloud level and still rising. Almost insane from fear, he began grasping wildly inside him for the fox's power. No red chakra met his desperate efforts, but flicks of black trailed under his questing mind.

"Calm down!" the blond gasped, one hand clutched to his chest. "You're hurting me!"

Naruto was beyond listening. His new braid was beginning to float beside him and the thought of weightlessness finished snapping him. He latched onto the black energy inside him and claimed it as his own. The blond let out another pained cry and slumped forward, unconscious, accidentally falling onto the controls and sending them into a sharp dive.

Two sharp metal collisions sounded immediately, showing two of the metal giants latching onto either side of the falling pair, correcting their path. One of the screens flashed to an image of the cobalt-eyed boy that seemed eternally ticked about something.

"Winner! Status!" he barked. "Quatre, are you conscious?" He cursed under his breath, but Naruto caught it anyways. It was so foul that it would make the perverted frog hermit gag. "Damn it! What did you do?"

"Nothing!" Naruto wailed. "I didn't touch him!"

Cobalt eyes narrowed. He could obviously see and hear him, and something he saw upset him. He turned his head to look at something else, another of his screens. Naruto heard the word 'Shinigami' before the screen he had been staring at went black.

Naruto tried to calm down by focusing on something else, anything else. They had said 'Shinigami' again. That meant 'God of Death' didn't it? Very slowly, he lifted the edge of his shirt, desperately hoping to find a familiar seal, praying that Shinigami was a new name for Kyuubi. No such luck. There was no seal and the chakra was completely wrong. In fact, it felt untouched.

Naruto's mind slowly shut down at the flood of information he didn't really care for. He was in the wrong body with a new demon, this time without a seal to protect him, and he was surrounded by technologically advanced strangers in what appeared to be space. Strangers with weapons and short tempers who didn't seem to like him. Even worse, without Kyuubi, he wasn't sure he could defend himself. That only brought up another disturbing thought. Where was Kyuubi? Was the fox still in his body and could the new host of his body control him? A panicked giggle slipped past his lips. His final thought formed before he lost consciousness from the stress.

_I wonder if Kakashi will believe I'm late because I was abducted by body-snatching aliens?_

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Duo didn't have the luxury of waking up in a bed as Naruto had. Instead, he found himself in a tree, lying across a massive branch with bark pressing into his exposed skin. He assumed it was where he had landed after the blast, not noticing the two people nearby. He might have been a trained terrorist, but they were trained ninja intent on remaining hidden.

Groaning inaudibly, he raised one hand up to his throbbing head, a bit confused when his fingers encountered spiky locks. He bolted upright in alarm, ignoring the blinding pain it brought to his head. His braid was gone!

"My hair!" he yelled.

"Shut up, dobe," someone near him hissed.

"Your hair is fine, Naruto," an exasperated woman said, coming into view. Duo blinked at her odd clothes and shockingly pink hair.

The combined shock of sudden company, the girl's strange appearance and being addressed by the wrong name were enough to temporarily stun him to silence. The soldier in him forced him to respond to whatever situation he found himself in, and he started taking mental notes.

The three of them were in a monstrous tree, easily a hundred feet in the air. His hair and weapons were gone and he seemed to be wearing some ridiculous orange jumpsuit. He glanced around, noticing that the two other people were roughly his age and both had odd-looking knives drawn. They seemed to know him and until he knew a little more, he'd play along. He'd spent enough time around Trowa's sister to recognize a throwing knife when he saw one. He never did think the brunette was entirely sane to stand as a target, and he definitely didn't want to try it for himself.

"Where are we?"

"Where do you think, dobe?" the boy answered in a monotone. Duo grinned. It was just like dealing with Heero.

"I think I just woke up and you could have dragged my ass anywhere," Duo growled. If they were calling him a blockhead, their friend probably had a forceful personality. He'd continue to act his normal obnoxious self until they started to react negatively. "So… where are we?" he repeated cheerfully.

"You're the only ninja in the world that could blow himself up in the Forest of Death and then forget where he was," the pink-haired girl said caustically.

Ninja? That caught Duo's attention. It certainly explained hiding in trees with knives. The Forest of Death part was just as amusing to the stranded pilot. Only people training as ninja would come up with such a silly name. For all he knew, he had just landed in a theme park. After all, who besides a bunch of kids would play like they were ninja?

The strange area and people, he could make sense of, but his hair and clothes bothered him. He didn't care who changed his clothes, or even that the outfit was ridiculous and would last roughly four seconds on a paintball field, but whoever had cut his hair was going to die.

"Now that you're awake and you've finished asking stupid questions, can we go?" the girl asked.

"Sure," Duo allowed, waiting for one of them to move. They just stared at him. "What?"

"Dobe," the raven-haired boy muttered. The girl exploded.

"Damn it, Naruto! We're following you!" When that statement earned her a blank look, she slapped him upside the head, almost knocking him out of the tree. "You said you found a way out. Now where is it?" Duo glanced around, seeing nothing but trees in every direction.

"I forgot," Duo muttered, trying for his best idiot expression. It worked, causing the pink-haired girl to hit him again.

"Now what?" she asked, sitting down heavily. "Kakashi ditches us out in the middle of nowhere then times us to get out. Naruto leads us on a wild goose chase and almost blows us up. Now what?"

Kakashi? Ah, another name for the list. He was apparently Naruto, so now he just needed to figure out who his companions were. It was easier to fake an identity if he knew names. He'd just play along until he could escape to a safe house.

"Just start in the direction you were leading us and see if you remember," the raven-haired boy suggested in his cold monotone.

"And which way was that?" Duo asked, looking around. Did they really intend to travel in the treetops? He supposed he could if necessary. It was like remotely like climbing on scaffolds in a way.

"That way, before you created a forty-foot crater," the girl told him, pointing.

Shrugging, Duo lightly jogged down the enormous branch until it neared another, jumping for the other. He barely made it, wobbling a little on landing. Instantly, two sets of eyes were glaring holes in the back of his head.

"Are you okay?" the girl asked slowly. Duo paused. Apparently, Naruto was a bit more graceful than he was. He quickly struggled with a cover story. They had mentioned him almost blowing himself up and a forty-foot crater. Injury. Bingo. He offered them some nervous laughter.

"Guess I got hit harder than I thought." The statement earned him two sighs.

"Sakura, stay with him. I'll scout ahead," the raven-haired boy said flatly, not sounding happy. The girl didn't look very pleased, but she obeyed, shadowing very close-by in case he wavered again. The dark teenager vanished into the enormous trees.

"You can't be mad that I'm hurt," Duo huffed.

Recently identified Sakura sighed. "We're mad because you walked into an obvious trap and got us more lost than ever. Now Sasuke has to clean up your mess. Again."

Sasuke. At least now he had the names he needed to bluff with. Pity though that he didn't have access to any of his own weapons or explosives. For lack of anything better to do while they slowly followed Sasuke, he searched through his pockets and pouches, curious to see what he did have. He located some throwing stars but passed those by, completely ignorant of how to use them. He settled for drawing one of those strange knives that looked to be balanced for throwing as well.

Blades seemed to be his only weapons. When he got back to civilization, he'd have to acquire a few guns and whip up some of his special explosives that the other guys refused to be in a twenty-mile radius of. Screw it. Why wait? He could forage some dangerous stuff off the ground if he had a little time.

Duo stopped in his travels and fished through his bags, looking for the rope he had passed by dismissively earlier. He looped it over the limb he was on and had already started to slide down when Sakura finally turned to see how far he'd fallen behind.

"Naruto! What are you doing?" she half yelled.

"I'll be back up in a few minutes."

"But most of the traps are down there," she said in frustration. "That's how you set off the last one!"

Ah, so that's why they all in the trees, acting like overgrown squirrels. Duo had wondered a bit on that. Dropping to the dirt, he began circling the ground near the tree, looking for anything useful. Some of the plants he didn't recognize, but a lot he did. He collected some random items he needed, none of which Sakura could see, and tucked what he found into various jacket pockets. Nature based weapons weren't his primary choice, but there was nothing else to work with. While nowhere near as effective as some of his toys, this way he'd at least have something on hand. G was something of a lunatic. The man could make a bomb out of a Twinkie and a fountain pen. And he had taught Duo everything he knew.

He was headed back to the rope when he saw something odd. At first he thought it was a boulder, but it seemed a little too structured, and what he thought had been moss was starting to look suspiciously like hair.

That's when he noticed Sakura, motioning wildly and pointing emphatically at the boulder. He had wondered why she hadn't been yelling at him to either hurry up or not trigger another explosion. Seeing that she finally had his attention, she began pointing to the rope and grabbed the top of it, bracing both of her feet and her back.

Slowly, so as to not attract the attention of whatever the boulder happened to be, Duo started to climb up the rope. He was astounded when Sakura started to pull in her end, surprised that she was strong enough to manage that. As soon as the limb was in reach, he latched on to it instead of the rope, taking the strain off Sakura. She ignored him and finished pulling up the rope, at one point deferring to latch onto his arm to certify that he was properly balanced.

"What is it?" Duo asked under his breath. He had been expecting an answer like 'bear' or 'mountain lion' or even 'red-assed baboon'. Her answer floored him.

"Spider," she said, causing Duo to do a double take. Was that even possible?

Sakura started pulling at him demandingly and he followed willingly. If that chest-high boulder really was an arachnid, it could probably climb much better than they could, himself especially. He had never heard of such a thing before, but while he was lost in a new place, he might as well err on the side of caution. Fighting with a car-sized spider was just out.

Treetop running was still difficult and Duo kept staggering on the longer jumps. Several times, he wouldn't have made the leaps had Sakura not been dragging him.

"What is wrong with you?" Sakura yelled, her voice partially carried away by the wind whipping by them. "You're never this slow!"

Slow? Slow! Where the hell was he and what was with these people? Now he was more determined to secure some sort of weapon more advanced than a knife.

Though by no means exhausted, Duo was fairly winded and beginning to tire when they finally reached where Sasuke had stopped to wait for them. The raven-haired youth was staring hard at Duo when they arrived, alerting the pilot that he was doing something severely out of character. If he had to guess, Naruto was in better physical shape than he was. He bared his teeth in a threatening manner.

"Bite me!" Duo snapped, glaring. "I'm injured!"

"You should heal more quickly than that," Sasuke said flatly.

"You sit in an explosion that creates a forty-foot crater. See if you're still moving," Duo countered. Okay, he had just learned something new about the blond he was imitating. Along with being in better shape, especially since he surprisingly wasn't tired yet, he apparently recovered more rapidly than the standard person. After considering, he realized that he no longer hurt, but that still didn't really help the whole balance issue. Duo's attitude and something similar to Heero's physique. In the future, he either had to avoid being hurt or better conceal any injuries or weariness if either occurred.

The dark glare only intensified. With a few short steps, Sasuke approached and pinned Duo to the trunk. Worried, Duo tried to fight him off but was overpowered immediately, unfamiliar with this form of hand-to-hand combat, both of his wrists caught above his head in one of Sasuke's hands. With his free hand, the raven teen yanked up his jacket and shirt to bare his stomach. Duo refrained from panicking, praying that the other boy wasn't looking for some reaction he wouldn't have. He didn't really understand when Sasuke placed his palm flat against his abdomen, confused by the seemingly harmless gesture.

Understandingly overwhelmed him suddenly and almost violently when he felt a burst of heat rush into his abdomen. Liquid fire swept across him, not painful but extremely intense. His pulse almost doubled and his breath seized in his throat. Wide-eyed, he lowered his gaze to his stomach, tracing glowing red lines with a good deal of incredulity.

Something _inhuman_ stirred inside him and he reflexively tamped it down. Duo almost did snap then, shock overwhelming his mind. He was host to a demon, and it wasn't Shinigami!

He was so preoccupied that he didn't notice Sasuke release him with a satisfied grunt and he certainly didn't hear Sakura's worried inquiry if he was okay. Shakily, Duo turned his consciousness inward, pressing his mind toward the new force he had to contend with, at least for now.

_Hello?_ Duo called out silently to the roused force within him.

_Miserable mortal,_ a deep rumbling voice answered. _Why are you here and where is Naruto?_

Duo only then realized that he was using his own appearance in his mental projection of himself. He edged towards some metal bars containing something powerful.

_I don't know how I got here or who Naruto is,_ Duo said, standing clear of the cage. From what he knew from experience, if it was locked up, it was dangerous. _I'm just trying to get back to my body and I'm sure Naruto is trying to do the same._

A set of glowing red eyes appeared behind the bars, narrowing at him speculatively. He seemed to be thinking. A growl started to resound through the cage just before he lunged for the bars, the massive fox fighting to free himself. Duo automatically tightened his mind to hold the demon in place. The nine-tailed fox hissed death and took a step back, looking remotely stunned that Duo had managed to restrain him so quickly and skillfully.

_Who are you, brat?_

_I am Shinigami,_ Duo said firmly, taking his own demon's name.

_Shinigami…_ the fox mused slowly. _His host, anyways. You and Naruto are brothers of a sort._

Duo blinked at the assessment and waited docilely, allowing the fox to think at his leisure. The demon obviously understood that Duo knew how to stand up for himself and even seemed to know Shinigami personally. He waited out the demon's pondering.

_Very well, host of Shinigami. I will find a way to correct what you two imbeciles have done._ He turned as if to walk away, hesitating a step to look over his shoulder at Duo. _My name is Kyuubi. Tell Shinigami that I said hi._

With that, Duo was flung out of the dark halls containing Kyuubi. The sudden force against him after his already prolonged activities of the day, including containing and speaking to the fox, left him in a gray haze. Conscious but not, Duo simply gave up and let the peaceful blackness claim him.

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Naruto regained consciousness when the crashing squeal of metal twisting echoed through the construct, letting him know that they had finally landed somewhere. He simply stayed crunched behind the seat, silently freaking out. The blond was still asleep, so he could only assume he was still being carried.

Quite predictably, the moment movement stopped, the hatch was ripped open and angry hands were reaching into the small space. The blond vanished into the fray and Naruto was dragged out by his hair. He was shoved face first against the lowered hatch door.

"What did you do?" the cobalt-eyed brunette roared. Or as Naruto was beginning to call him, Mr. Happy.

"Nothing!"

"Gundam pilots don't pass out from 'nothing'. What did you do?" Naruto caught the word 'Gundam' and stored it away for later use. A familiar click sounded. Ah, that weird weapon again, no doubt an inch from his skull.

"I got nervous and freaked out when we left the planet," Naruto said honestly, the excuse sounding even lame to him. "I didn't know he was an empath." They were rare, but he had encountered a few in Kohana.

"How could you not know?" the oriental boy beside them yelled. "Hell, even I know, Maxwell!"

Naruto growled. Enough was enough. He'd already admitted that he knew nothing and wasn't who they thought he was. He was tired of being pushed around by those scrawny wimps. He built up a small amount of energy and performed the Replacement Technique, stuffing Bangs under Mr. Happy while he moved himself clear of the melee. In the same move, he took the oriental boy's weapon and left him holding his own shoe.

After a good deal of cursing and a brief moment of confusion, the three managed to reorient themselves, replace their weapons and round on Naruto. Though formerly irritated, the ninja was amused at their sheer lack of coordination. He gave them partial credit since they had managed at all in such a small space.

"How did you do that?" Bangs asked.

"Easy," Naruto grinned. "Like I told you. I'm not Duo." With that, he grabbed the back of the blond boy's belt and leapt off the hatch door. Bangs and Mr. Happy lunged for him, but he was well into his jump and far out of reach. Naruto casually watched them go ballistic as he fell with their unconscious comrade in hand. They obviously knew jack-squat about ninja and he was more than happy to give them reasons to rip their hair out.

The three remaining pilots followed rapidly, sliding down the cable and landing hard in their efforts to get to their friend as quickly as possible. Bangs made it to them first.

"Quatre!"

Naruto started to say that the blond was okay, but was cut off when the other two pilots tackled him. Technology and weapons out of the picture, he was quick to escape the fight, leaving them in a tangle on the ground. The oriental pilot got to his feet first and launched a swift roundhouse kick.

Naruto could have done a number of things under that meager attack. He could have dodged, performed a simple block with his arm or leg, or hit him in return. Dodging wasn't enough and he didn't want to hurt the other teenager, so he did something that was purely Naruto. He dropped under the swung leg and assaulted his opponent's clothes, stealing his belt and yanking his pants to his ankles. The oriental boy tripped on his own clothes and landed on his face.

Laughing, he turned to face Mr. Happy and found himself staring directly at that weapon he didn't recognize again. Naruto sighed and raised his hands in defeat, surrendering again. In his life, he had learned that any unrecognized weapon or jutsu was to be treated as potentially lethal until he knew what it was. Until he solved the mystery of these blunt metal devices, he wasn't going to needlessly fight.

"For the last time, baka, how are you doing this?" the cobalt-eyed teen said angrily. "Even I couldn't have made that jump with a passenger, and I know that you're not a match for either Wufei or myself in a hand-to-hand combat."

"And for the last time, bastard, I am not Duo," Naruto grated out just as forcefully. It was the same as one of his fights with Sasuke. During this time, the recently identified Wufei, assuming that Mr. Happy didn't refer to himself in the third person, had gotten up and pulled up his pants. "As for fighting, you two just suck. I don't know about Bangs or Blondie," he thought the blond had been called Quatre, but he wasn't sure. "I'll just assume they fight as badly as you."

"Naruto," Bangs said slowly, testing the new name. "What is wrong with Quatre?"

So the blond was Quatre after all. "He's an empath. I've never been in space before and I panicked. Wait… we went into space didn't we? Where are we?"

"We're in Spain, Naruto," Bangs said concisely. He didn't seem the talkative sort, but Wufei and Mr. Happy would probably be even less useful to question.

"We had to change course because of you, Duo," Wufei griped. "It's hard enough to land on a colony without being spotted even without carrying a crippled Gundam."

"It was an accident!" Naruto retorted automatically. "And if I have to tell you again that I'm not Duo, I'll carve it into your forehead!"

"No one else could have hair like that!" Wufei argued as though Naruto didn't know his own identity, which at the moment, he really didn't.

"You're basing who I am on my hairstyle?"

"Not the style, baka. The length," Wufei said, his voice condescending.

"Anyone can change what they look like!"

"You can't make it spontaneously longer!"

"Yes, you can," Naruto argued stubbornly, glaring. The argument was quickly moving towards absolute childishness and pointlessness.

"No, you can't." And there it went.

Sadly enough, it appeared that Duo and Wufei bickered like children often enough that Bangs immediately attempted to interrupt the two of them.

"We'll go back into space when it's safe," Bangs said bluntly, pulling Naruto out of the budding battle. The ninja stopped cold.

"Space?" he parroted, sounding slightly horrified.

"Can you get any stupider?" Wufei asked, attempting to restart the fight. Mr. Happy just rolled his eyes and adopted a harassed look.

"You two carry Quatre. I'll stay with Duo."

"Naruto," he corrected automatically.

"Can you handle him on your own, Yuy?" Wufei asked. Ah, so Mr. Happy was actually named Yuy.

"I'm fine," Yuy sighed, reaching to lead Naruto by the elbow. The ninja allowed it more because he was stunned by the space comment than actual compliancy.

With all of the prior commotion, Naruto hadn't taken in their location. He started studying his surroundings, trying to tally everything around him in case he needed to escape quickly or fight. Four ten-story robots were not conducive to a peaceful environment. His guess about fighting was proved correct far more quickly than he'd really liked.

The moment they had stepped outside, they were swarmed by men in uniform holding longer versions of the weapon he had seen before, one end braced at the shoulder. Naruto was torn between looking at them or up at the sky, a clear view of the stars shining down from the blackness since he really didn't consider the newcomers a threat.

"Surrender!" one of the surrounding men yelled. Even with the new course, they had been spotted and intercepted. The three conscious pilots glared at Naruto. "Drop your weapons!"

Yuy started counting, calculating his chances of wiping out all of the soldiers single-handed. There were almost a hundred armed men and he knew for a fact that he didn't have enough ammo or endurance to get all of them. Naruto interrupted him by leaning over and whispering a question.

"If I get rid of all of them, will you guys answer my questions and help me find a way home?" he hissed.

"Duo, if you could get us out of this, I'll be your slave for a week," Wufei drawled sarcastically, preparing to surrender. He could always escape later.

"Agreed," Naruto accepted, ignoring the wrong name for now. He turned his mind towards the black energy he had felt before and pulled at it, reinforcing his body. Backed by the limitless flood of power he received, he ran forward towards the armed men. Weapons immediately honed in on him, but it was no use, he was already amongst them. The fight was over before it really began, unconscious bodies scattering the area.

"Holy shit," Wufei managed, ebony eyes huge. He couldn't seem to comprehend what he was seeing. Naruto just smirked at him from across a pile of unconscious men.

_So you do know what you're doing,_ a bemused voice said in Naruto's head. He barely refrained from jumping. _I had wondered after you passed out last time._

He might have responded scathingly, but apparently Yuy snapped out of his shock. The cobalt-eyed brunette departed very rapidly and vanished from view. Luckily, they were in a rather remote area, so only a few soldiers had managed to respond at all and only then with guns. He returned almost immediately behind the wheel of a rather plain looking car, not wanting to use the more conspicuous Oz vehicles.

Though fairly rarely in the past, Naruto had seen cars before. In ninja villages, they were simply never used since it was simply faster to get around on foot. Following the examples of the other teenagers, he got in, figuring out the handle fairly easily.

"What about your metal things?" Naruto questioned when it became clear that they were being left behind to fall into enemy hands.

"We'll retrieve them later," Yuy said flatly, seeming displeased as always.

Even though he knew of cars, he'd never ridden in one and was fairly stunned when Yuy stomped on the gas and peeled out. He was amazed that the hunk of metal on wheels could move so quickly, but he could still move faster on foot. He didn't protest because he was lost anyways and he still needed answers, from both the other teenagers and the black power within him named Shinigami.

------------------------------

Duo woke up feeling like he had the worst hangover of his life, and he had gone on some great benders. Nearby, some discussion clearly involving him, or who they thought he was anyways, was taking place.

"…acting insane. He forgot how to follow a simple path and he can barely move around. He's really slow and weak, and I haven't seen him use a single jutsu," Sakura said.

"His accent changed and so did his demeanor," Sasuke added.

"So you don't think this is Naruto?" a new voice asked.

Duo tried to discretely get a look at the man he'd heard. To do so, he had to take stock of his location. He was pleased to note that he was still in the tree, propped against the trunk. That would place all three of the others on the branch in front of him in plain sight with no way to sneak up on him from behind. Keeping his head slumped against his chest to keep his bangs in his face, he cautiously snuck a peek at the man through hooded eyes and unruly blond bangs.

"No, it has to be Naruto. The seal is still in place," Sakura told the man.

Duo was struggling not to laugh himself sick. The newest addition to the group was taking the ninja bit way to far with the mask covering his face and one eye hidden by his forehead protector. His hair was bright silver and seemed to defy gravity, much like Trowa's bangs. Duo dubbed him 'Puffy' until he learned his name.

"How long has he been like this?" Puffy asked.

"Strange or unconscious?" Sakura asked him to verify.

"Both," Puffy said, his one visible eye trained on Duo. He continued speaking before either of them could answer. "Why don't you answer instead?"

Busted. Duo dropped the act and raised his head, flipping blond bangs out of his eyes. He offered up a shit-eating grin.

"I was knocked out," Duo guessed. Since he had woken up, he assumed that Naruto had taken a somewhat severe hit, probably to the head given the headache he had suffered. And was now suffering again, thanks to the damn fox. "Twice," he continued gleefully. He pointed at Sasuke. "In fact, he did it the second time."

"What did he do?" Puffy asked, trying to maneuver him into a lie he could easily call him out on.

Duo thought quickly. They had mentioned a seal and Sasuke had even checked it, so he could only assume they knew about the demon. Naruto obviously hadn't been careful enough to keep him unknown, either that or it was common knowledge without his aide. He motioned towards Sasuke accusingly.

"He pissed off Kyuubi," he stated, trying to look angry about it. He succeeded largely with that particular expression due to the fact that his head hurt because of the raven-haired boy.

_Naruto never calls me that,_ Kyuubi said instantly. _He always calls me 'fox' or 'damn fox' when he talks about me or to me._ Duo tried to refrain from sighing. Not only did he have to deal with the demon as well, but now Puffy looked suspicious. He heard the fox sigh as well. _Just do what I say._

"And the first time?" He knew something was wrong, but he couldn't figure out what and Duo wasn't eager to enlighten either the fox or the strange man.

_You hit a tripwire. Blame Sasuke,_ the fox advised.

"His fault again," Duo said emphatically. "The bastard distracted me." Sasuke rolled his eyes, used to being blamed for the blonde's mistakes.

"And?" Puffy prompted.

"I found a tripwire," Duo responded, grinning. He wasn't going to give in that easily and Puffy was starting to look annoyed. They both knew that he wasn't who he looked like. Puffy just wanted him to admit it.

_His name is Kakashi,_ Kyuubi said. _He always shows up late with a stupid excuse and he always reads a dirty book._

Duo was pleased that the fox seemed to be on his side and was trying to help him stay hidden. Kakashi, so helpfully identified, sighed in defeat, seeming to realize that he wasn't getting anywhere.

"You set off quite an explosion," Kakashi said, trying to egg him on into speaking. "Much larger than you normally manage."

"Talent," Duo quipped.

"Indeed," Kakashi said flatly. "We'll stop here for the night." His visible eye took on a conniving look. "Why don't you find something for supper, Naruto?" The name was slightly stressed, telling Duo that the identity game was still underway.

Duo nodded and stood up, only then realizing it was dark now that Kakashi had said something. He glanced around speculatively, wondering where to go. Finding dinner had two immediate purposes he could see, the first of which was to test his skill at foraging, something that Naruto could apparently do. The second was probably so that they could talk about him without him hearing. He wished that he had access to some technology, and it wouldn't be for the last time.

There was suddenly a new challenge to face. He knew how to hunt or forage as the situation called for, but he wasn't eager to do it in a place that had horse-sized spiders. The mere thought of what some of the other critters in the area might look like turned him off the idea of hunting. He then considered sticking to plants instead of animals, but didn't recognize the local plant life.

Trying to maintain the illusion, he trotted obediently to the end of the limb and leapt for another, barely making the leap. He made it about a dozen hops when he missed his footing, scrambling a bit and landing flat on his stomach across the limb. Embarrassed, and completely winded, he looked back to see if they noticed his blunder only to make a rather unsettling discovery. He had no idea where they were. In the moonlight, he could only see a short distance from himself.

Duo almost panicked before he reconsidered the situation. If he couldn't see them, then they probably couldn't see him.

"See ya," he muttered, hurrying to his feet.

Thirty minutes and some distance later, Duo settled down in a tree to play with the items he had gathered earlier while Sakura had nearly had an epileptic fit. A thick hollow reed was the most important of his findings. He was pleased to see that the end he'd packed with clay was dry and possibly ready for use. Smiling, he pulled out one of the many knives hidden about his person and set to drilling a small hole in the reed just in front of the clay plug. Before long, he intended to have a fully functioning, if crude, bazooka. It would have to serve as a temporary long distance weapon until he could assemble something better. And by that, he meant more deadly.

It took a bit of tinkering with the soil samples he'd filed his pockets with, but his bomb skills proved exact. He'd managed to combine the proper mineral-laced sands to produce something combustible, just slightly weaker than real gunpowder. He poured a good bit down the reed and packed it in with a stick, trying to convince himself that he hadn't created a really crappy musket.

Lacking anything better to shove down the thing, he dropped in the oddly thick and heavy knife he had been using earlier. He had out two more fat knives and was experimenting rubbing them together to get sparks when a voice sounded from the darkness.

"I give up. What in the hell are you doing?"

Soldier reflexes kicked in and Duo snapped his poor excuse for a weapon towards the source of the voice, bracing the butt end against his hip. His hands automatically struck the two blades together somewhat forcefully, creating the necessary sparks. His makeshift gun went off with a deafening boom.

Both Duo and his target nearly fell out of the tree, the former from the recoil and the latter from shock. The blade of the fat knife had embedded itself fully into the tree's trunk, vanishing all the way to the tip of the handle. Beside said handle stood Kakashi, his visible eye enormous. Recognizing him, Duo calmed a little, though he was vexed to have been located so quickly.

"Don't sneak up on me!" Duo snapped.

Recovering quickly from his alarmed state, Kakashi's visible eye narrowed. "I shouldn't have been able to, especially since I wasn't trying." He drew closer, expression becoming angry for the first time. Duo made a note not to piss him off in the future since he seemed rather protective of his students. "Who are you?"

Game over, Duo figured. Too many mistakes in too short of a time span. He decided to give in and play nice for now.

"In order of your questions, I was assembling a bazooka and my name is Duo Maxwell," he said placidly. He glanced at the ruin of his weapon, the initial burst shattering the muzzle of the reed-based gun. Frowning, he turned it away as useless, tossing it from the tree. Kakashi looked less pleased than ever, refraining from attacking only because the youth was doing nothing more than looking at him.

"You deliberately attempted to kill me?" he started, waiting for the response before he kicked the younger man's ass.

"You startled me," Duo retorted, a bit surprised when the other man backed down. He was then wary of what was about to be asked. He knew it was coming but refused to be the first one to voice the idea he least wanted to answer.

"Where is Naruto?" Kakashi asked. Ah, there was the dreaded question. Trust the man to get straight to the point now that he wasn't having fun with the conversation.

"I don't know," Duo admitted openly. "Probably with my friends."

Before he could blink, Duo was slammed into a tree by the scruff of his neck by a very angry ninja. The Gundam pilot could only assume that the older man believed that he had played a personal role in kidnapping the blond.

"How can you not know?" Kakashi asked, confirming Duo's suspicions.

"Put me down and I'll talk," Duo snapped. Being smashed against a tree was decidedly uncomfortable.

"You'd just run."

"We've seen how effective that is," Duo drawled.

Slowly, Kakashi released his hold and stepped back, though he remained vigilant. Duo straightened his clothes out of reflex and glared at the silver-haired man.

"I told you. Naruto is probably with my friends and I don't think they'll hurt him."

"You said you don't know where he was?"

"I'm still trying to figure out where I am!"

"Kohana," Kakashi said flatly.

"Not helping," Duo groused.

"Leaf?" Kakashi tried again. Duo shook his head in the negative.

"Just point me to the nearest base and I'll find someone to fix this," he offered.

"Base?" Kakashi asked, starting to become unnerved. He had a sinking feeling that much more than a simple mind swap had happened, though he didn't have a clue as to how that would even occur. Duo seemed to understand the severity of the situation as well. "Where exactly are you from?"

"Space colony L2," Duo said, carefully watching the older man's reaction to determine just how badly he was screwed. He could see the stunned look in the silver-haired man's visible eye and he knew then that there were no colonies here. Wherever here was.

_Space?_ Kyuubi butted in. Since the silver-haired man was too preoccupied to keep questioning him, he didn't mind talking to the demon. The poor jounin looked utterly dumfounded and unfit for conversation, at least for now.

_Am I to understand that there is no technology at all here?_ Duo asked.

_There is some,_ Kyuubi answered. _But nothing like I see in your mind._

The fox could read his mind? Suddenly angry, Duo slammed down some mental walls, locking down the demon entirely. He was just in time in bailing on that conversation to catch the next question aimed at him.

"How did you get here?"

Duo managed to bite back 'How should I know?' just in time and gave a more appropriate answer. "I was in an explosion and from what I gathered, so was Wonder Boy." Kakashi blinked at the description of his bungling student. "I woke up here. I don't know any more than you do." Not entirely honest since he hadn't admitted to being an avatar. He suspected that the demon fox and the God of Death were somehow involved in the mess. "Now what?"

"I'll take you back to the village. The Hokage might be able to help." He leapt to the next branch, waiting for Duo to follow. He watched the boy, seeming to understand that the teenager wasn't used to that mode of travel. Despite all of the boy's attempts not to be seen, he had been observed quite thoroughly, every stumble and slip cataloged.

"So long as we're not headed for a tree house somewhere," Duo muttered. He made a clumsy leap after the jounin, staggering a little upon landing but keeping his footing. He glared at the older man's amused look at his lack of finesse. "I've never had to run through trees like some squirrel on crack before. Bite me."

Duo swore that Kakashi was smiling under his mask but it was hard to tell. The silver-haired man might have answered had they not encountered Sasuke and Sakura going the other way, the two obviously looking for them.

"Are you alright?" Sakura burst out upon spotting them. "We heard an explosion."

"My bad," Duo offered immediately before Kakashi could even open his mouth. If there was one thing Duo was good at, it was talking his way out of just about anything. Until goaded again though, he would not elaborate. Sasuke and Sakura didn't need to know what a bazooka was anyways.

"Figures," Sasuke said sourly. "Dobe."

"We'll be returning to Kohana immediately," Kakashi said before Duo could start an argument with Sasuke, a habit that he apparently shared with Naruto. "There's been an accident. He can't use chakra at all." He deliberately avoided to referring to Duo by name. Knowledge that the container for the Kyuubi was virtually helpless was not information that really needed to be spread around.

"How did that happen?" Sakura asked, more caring than her companion.

"Talent," Duo grinned. "I blew myself up. How else?" There was enough truth to the statement that no one could catch him in a lie by the tone of his voice.

"Dobe," Sasuke reiterated.

Duo happily flipped him the bird and leapt after Kakashi, who had already started moving to avoid answering questions. He must have looked extremely pathetic because both Sasuke and Sakura flanked him, ready to keep him from falling. It was utterly humiliating, but everyone knew it was necessary.

Twice before exiting the trees, Kakashi vanished for a few moments accompanied by a few thuds and an explosion. Once Sasuke did the same thing. Duo bristled, but tried to put up with it. They were babysitting him and he knew it. While it was mandatory to protect his sorry hide, it still stung his pride.

When the foursome finally leapt over the mother of all fences to return to a more normal version of the outdoors, Duo was beyond upset. Sasuke had carried him over the fence, only releasing him once they were safely on the ground. He was not some helpless civilian to be coddled! The moment the village was in sight, Duo started plotting. He glanced at his three companions, zeroing in on Kakashi.

"Get the Hokage," Duo said irately. "I'll be… around."

Before anyone could stop him, or Kakashi could think to question how Duo knew where to go, he was gone. Ninja or not, none of the three could follow him when he decided to disappear. Duo was a street rat at heart, born, bred and raised, and when he wanted to vanish, no one could do anything about it, not even a ninja.

------------------------------

Naruto was the very first out of the car when they stopped at a small cottage in the middle of nowhere. Never before had he been so mortified as he had been at the mercy of Yuy's driving capabilities. Quatre sighed, knowing he'd have to deal with this new mess.

"I'll contact G," the blond said. "We'll take him off duty until he stops acting weird." The other pilots in the car nodded.

"I'm not babysitting him," Wufei argued.

"I'll watch him," Bangs said, getting out of the vehicle and approaching Naruto. "Come on, Duo."

"Naruto," he corrected again with a sigh. He got an evil little look on his face. "And I believe Wufei promised to be my personal slave for a week."

It was nothing short of a miracle that the Chinese pilot didn't spontaneously implode. He had already developed a ticking muscle in his cheek. He slid out of the car with a murderous look on his face, leaving the other two to follow.

"Are you sure you want him?" Bangs asked.

"Sure!" Naruto chirped, watching the vein in Wufei's forehead twitch as his blood pressure rose to dangerous levels. "I've never had a pet before." The only thing that stopped Wufei from drawing a gun and shooting him in the head was the fact that there were people between them. Naruto had to stifle a giggle. It was easier than baiting Ebisu.

"Baka," Wufei growled, sounding much like Heero.

"Don't 'baka' me. I own you," Naruto taunted. He was avidly watching the vein jumping in Wufei's forehead. He took a calculated guess on the Chinese boy's temperament. "Unless, of course, you're going back on your word." Bingo. Wufei looked like he was going to pop.

"Maxwell," he growled.

_Maxwell?_ Naruto thought.

_Duo's family name,_ Shinigami supplied. Naruto thanked him silently.

"Uzumaki," he corrected gleefully. "It's Naruto Uzumaki."

"Just give up and use that name," the blond advised. "It's easier than arguing about it." With that, he led the retreat inside, leaving Wufei and Naruto to duke it out. Yuy and Bangs were quick to follow. Naruto grinned maniacally as he eyed his prey.

"You promised to answer some questions," he said bluntly.

"Yes," Wufei acceded warily.

"Okay," Naruto beamed. "What are the full names of everyone here and everywhere I may need to know? Who is G? What's a Gundam? And what's the deal with space?"

Wufei looked concussed. "Are you serious?"

"Yup. Start talking."

Two hours later and Wufei was in distinct danger of going bald from ripping his own hair out in frustration. All he'd heard since the questioning began was series of half-assed, pointless inquiries. "What's that?" "Who's that?" "Why?" "How does this work?" The poor Chinese pilot had been ready to kill Naruto until he'd slowly come to realize that the other teenager honestly didn't know. Their session of Q and A was interrupted by Heero.

"We have a mission," he said flatly. He looked at Naruto accusingly. "And G said to bring him, memory loss or not." Naruto just stared at the other four teenagers, not quite understanding their worried and accusing expressions.

"What's a mission?" Naruto asked innocently, knowing darn well what one was in his own world if not here.

"This is just perfect," Trowa, previously known as Bangs, said sarcastically.

"He's dead meat," Wufei added emphatically, looking at Naruto.

"What?" Naruto asked innocently, not understanding the myriad of looks passed across him between the four pilots.

------------------------------

Kakashi was beyond vexed. For almost four days, he had been searching for Duo and the boy's demonic charge. Without the constant chakra use and explosions that followed Naruto, making him simple to track, the boy's new persona had all but disappeared. Even conventional tracking seemed to fail. Considering how uncoordinated and slow the blond was, he could hide like nobody's business. He finally located the teenager just outside of Kohana, hiding in a small shack that had long since been abandoned. He crept in through a window and flat out froze at what he found.

Wires and bits of metal filled the place, the occasional object glowing. Half-built… _things_… littered the floor. Some strange framework was partially set up, easily eight feet tall, the top almost bumping the ceiling, and the sides spilling unattached wires. Duo was in the middle of the mess, tinkering with something in his lap and occasionally glancing at a fat cylinder at his side. The item in his hands snapped into place and he set it aside to reach for something else, revealing a rather sizable revolver to the jounin. While guns existed, they were generally not used in favor of more dangerous and destructive jutsus. Now Duo had the glowing cylinder in his lap and had popped open a panel to play with some heavy wiring.

"Yo," Kakashi greeted uncertainly. Duo responded accordingly, snapping his latest device in his direction. The jounin raised his hands in surrender, remembering their last encounter with the teenager's toys. Snorting, Duo backed off and, much to Kakashi's relief, set down the glowing cylinder.

"What do you want?" Duo asked a bit sourly, not appreciating being interrupted.

"I spoke to the Hokage," Kakashi offered, still eyeing the weapon despite the fact that the younger man had set it down. A bazooka made with a reed was bad enough. Something with heavy metal plating and wires that _glowed_ was simply not something he'd rather see in action, especially against him.

"And?"

"She's never heard of anything like this, but promised to research the situation," he said slowly. "Where did you get all of this?"

"Creative financing," Duo answered, picking another piece of his work and toying with it a little, despite the fact that it would be more polite to face the man speaking to him. He just liked watching the jounin squirm.

"You stole it," Kakashi translated. Duo smirked. "In a town full of ninja, you managed to steal all of this?"

"Nobody can catch Shinigami," Duo chuckled half-heartedly. He tampered with the new device and it loosed a harsh hiss. Raising a piece of it to his lips, he started speaking into it. "Shinigami to base. G, where the hell are you?"

_Shinigami?_ Kakashi wondered mutely. God of Death. He stared at Duo uncomfortably, wondering if he was in over his head. Every time he spoke to the youth, the situation went further downhill.

"Is that all you came for?" Duo asked, interrupting his introspective thoughts.

"No," the jounin admitted. "The Hokage decided that it was best to keep the events hidden for your own safety as well as ours." He had the distinct impression that the simple request would have been denied had he not added that last bit. While Duo frankly made him uncomfortable for some reason (perhaps because of the glowing things littering the room), he doubted that the boy wanted them to be hurt. "We need to be seen in public taking missions together."

"Can I have a few days to prepare?"

"Prepare?"

Duo grinned a bit at the confusion in the older man's voice. He did a quick inventory of his collection of stolen property as he prodded the jounin on.

"Is there a mission already scheduled?" he asked lazily.

"Yes. Tomorrow, we're traveling to a nearby village to investigate a robbery…"

"I only hit Kohana," Duo muttered.

"Of a ninja scroll," Kakashi finished, glaring. He wasn't amused that his newest charge was an unabashed thief, but he didn't want to say anything about it. The boy seemed to be trying to find a way to fix whatever had happened. He almost drew a weapon when the device in Duo's lap sizzled and started to give of a scratchy noise. Duo quickly fiddled with the wires until the crackling sound became intelligible as speech. He recognized it as a modified transmitter, much more complex than the simple ones they used on missions.

"Shinigami, this is G. Where are you?"

Kakashi perked up, thinking for a moment that they had found a source to help them. The grim look on Duo's face drew him up short.

"Can you triangulate?" Duo asked in return.

"Not from here."

_What does triangulate mean?_ Kyuubi asked. He had been avidly watching every last move his new host was making in an attempt to understand some of the technology, but he didn't recognize anything more complicated than the headsets, and only then because ninja already used those.

_It's a way to locate people,_ Duo said simply. _And he doesn't know what it is either._

"Whoever he is, he's avoiding the question," Duo said aloud so both of them could hear. He turned his end of the transmitter back on. "You are fifty-three miles to the north of us. Can you move to intercept?"

The moment he flipped it off again, Kakashi exploded.

"What are you telling him for? You just said you didn't know who he is!"

"On my way," fizzled back. Kakashi looked even angrier. Duo just started laughing hysterically, setting the device to the side.

"Don't worry. He's somewhere to the southwest a few miles from here. Whoever this guy is, we're not going to be seeing him anytime soon." He studied Kakashi. "How many people here can use a two-way radio?"

"Almost everyone."

"Who would pretend to be G to find me?"

That was what had him so worried, the exact reason that the Hokage was trying to bury all knowledge of what had happened. "There are a few people quite interested in Naruto and…"

"The fox," Duo finished.

"Exactly," Kakashi sighed. "Which is why you may need additional protection."

"I think I have it covered," Duo snorted. "Or I will by tomorrow."

Kakashi eyed the odd, half-built weapons. "That's not exactly what I meant. Sasuke, Sakura and I can protect you from physical attacks…"

"So you did tell them what was going on."

Kakashi ignored the statement of the obvious and bulled on. "But we can't risk you being hit with high ninjutsu. The seal could be damaged."

"So I'll stay here out of sight. Problem solved," Duo said loftily.

"Even if we aren't in battle, you're still in danger," Kakashi said hesitantly. Duo knew evasion when he saw it, being a master of it himself. "We think it would be safer if either myself or the Hokage placed a second seal on you."

_No! Don't let them!_ Kyuubi burst out. _It will trap you here. The first seal binds me to Naruto. If you let them do that, it will be much harder to get rid… get you home._

"Denied," Duo told Kakashi. "Even if I was comfortable with letting you try that, Kyuubi said that it will trap me here."

"You can speak to it?" he exclaimed. "That's all the more reason to seal you."

"My ass," Duo snapped. "I will not have you hindering my attempt to get home for some paranoid excuse. I'm used to speaking with demons. This is nothing new." Kakashi actually looked more unnerved than before.

"Who exactly do you talk to?" he asked slowly, paling when he earned a maniacal grin from Duo. He set aside his half-built weapon and stood up with a flourish.

"I seem to have been remiss in introducing myself," Duo beamed. His eyes shone with a slightly mad light. Oh, how it was fun to tease the man. "I am Shinigami."

Kakashi nearly went ballistic, just as Duo had anticipated, but for an entirely different reason than he expected.

"Naruto has access to Shinigami?!?" he exploded. "Please tell me you have a stable seal."

"Actually, until I got here, I'd never even heard of seals," Duo offered, seeming to take great pleasure in watching Kakashi give birth to a litter of kittens where he stood.

"No… seal," he said in a strangled voice.

"All the more reason you don't have to place one on me. He's no threat," Duo finished. Kyuubi hissed at him, but remained otherwise silent. To his credit, Kakashi actually considered the facts before he pressed his side of the argument.

"Then why can't you use chakra at all?"

"Because I don't know what chakra is," Duo quipped.

"Please tell me you're kidding." Duo shook his head. "Then how do you control Shinigami or plan to subdue Kyuubi?"

"Because I'm an ornery little shit," Duo said honestly. "Pissy counts for a lot, especially in my line of work."

"And what do you do?" Kakashi asked, allowing himself to take the bait even though he knew he'd regret it.

"Depends on who you ask," Duo grinned. "Ranges everywhere from the contemporary Gundam pilot to trained terrorist and assassin."

"Gundam?" Kakashi echoed, too stunned at the information to really say much. In the last few minutes, he'd learned a number of facts about the teenager that made him extremely uneasy. He'd managed to get over the boy being from space, and now he found that the fifteen-year-old, he assumed the two were the same age, was in the middle of a war from how it sounded. Add in the God of Death, who Naruto now had full access to without the aid of a seal, and he was headed for a complete mental meltdown.

"Deathscythe, my Gundam, is a piece of mobile artillery about fifty-four feet tall, weighing in at more than seven tons," Duo supplied, happily knowing that if Kakashi's hair wasn't already silver, it would be turning gray.

Duo really didn't mind giving up personal information, since no one in this world could possibly use it against him. He was just enjoying watching Kakashi get more and more worked up. Some people were just fun to rile. He was just waiting to see how much the man would believe before flat out calling him a liar.

"Fifty-four… never mind," Kakashi sighed. It was no wonder that the boy couldn't fight. He had toys to fight for him. In a way, he had to respect that. Since they either didn't or couldn't use chakra to fight, they used their brains. "Have you seen the front gate to Kohana?"

"Seen and bypassed," Duo acknowledged, amused that he'd managed to fry the ninja's mind entirely. He plopped down amidst his toys and grabbed one seemingly at random.

"Meet us there at seven tomorrow morning."

"Got it," Duo affirmed, still working on something he was assembling. After a moment, he looked up when he noticed that Kakashi hadn't left. "Yes?" he prompted.

"Do you mind if I watch for awhile?" Kakashi asked, truly curious. Duo sighed.

"You and Kyuubi both," he muttered. "Watch all you like. You're never going to figure out what I'm doing."

The jounin nodded and settled against a wall to watch Duo work, quickly losing track of the wires. When the teenager started the tedious task of soldering, he began glancing around at the rest of the pilfered items. Watching someone with Naruto's appearance do something intellectual, along with a look of concentration, was weird anyways.

A small pile of short pipes filled a corner, and with the fuses sticking out of one end, it didn't take a genius to identify them as bombs. Not far from that was a collection of glassware on a long sturdy oak table, some of the containers empty and some filled with unidentified liquids or powders. One jar was braced above a candle, the liquid inside gently boiling. It gave off a pungent smell. He didn't know what it was, but he was willing to bet it wasn't good.

"I thought you were trying to get back," Kakashi said carefully. "Most of these things are clearly weapons."

"I refuse to be defenseless while I'm here," Duo said half-heartedly, not really listening to him. "The Hokage may not be able to help and I'll have to look for alternate sources. I don't expect you lot to babysit me while I wander around with you or work on getting back home."

Kakashi opened his mouth to refute the babysitting accusation but was cut off by a high-pitched whir that quickly built in volume and frequency. He spun around to see a fat cylinder in Duo's hands, different from the one before, the end braced against his shoulder. Light shone down the sides, building to a painfully bright ball of illumination at the other end. Duo pulled back a lever and the light and shrieking whir both faded away.

"What is that?" Kakashi asked in a strangled voice, a tone that he was quickly perfecting around the technologically oriented brat.

_What is that?_ Kyuubi simultaneously echoed.

"The end product of three days of construction," Duo laughed, delighted that he had managed to build it correctly without access to real technology. "I call it BAD. Buster ala Duo!"

"You're treating it like a toy," Kakashi remarked.

"It is," Duo returned cheerfully.

He almost responded harshly to the flippant answer before remembering a few earlier comments. 'Fifty-four feet tall' and 'more than seven tons' ran on an endless cycle through Kakashi's head. "Duo? Tell me that Naruto doesn't have access to your… Gundam."

"Of course not!" Duo exclaimed. Kakashi started to relax a bit when he continued, no doubt for the sole purpose of making him crazy. "I blew mine up. That's how I got here."

"Yours… Are there more?" Kakashi asked cautiously.

"About half a dozen Gundam, and some odd thousands of mobile suits and mobile dolls," Duo shrugged. He set aside his newly made buster rifle. "Most of the things there, you simply don't want to know about or plain wouldn't understand if I told you. Just like I won't know anything you tell me about this place. Oh, and if you enjoy the use of your arms and legs, you probably shouldn't be leaning on that table."

Kakashi moved quickly, glancing at the table of glass vials and beakers before turning his attention back to Duo. He didn't bother asking what it was, trusting that it was something destructive he wouldn't recognize the name of. He felt a pang of sympathy for both Duo and Naruto at that moment. Both they, and anyone who had to deal with them, would be feeling grossly confused and out of their league.

"What happened to finding a way home?" he tried again, still studying various items in the room. The metal scaffolding overflowing with wires kept most of his attention.

"Priorities," Duo answered promptly, keeping with his prior answer concerning his toys. "Have to make sure I'm alive long enough to get home."

"Work on getting home. I'll make sure you're safe," Kakashi said carefully. The teenager seemed to have a volatile temperament that he couldn't quite figure out. He wasn't sure what would or wouldn't set him off. The blond seemed to love to argue, but at the simplest comment or action, he would more or less explode.

"I told you, no babysitters," Duo protested.

"I just want my student back. Helping you is the best way to make sure he's safe," Kakashi said shrewdly. Duo gave him a flat look for the dirty tactic of claiming to be worried for a friend.

"Seven at the gates," Duo said, dismissing the jounin curtly. He was miffed that he had so abruptly been made to look like an uncaring heel. "Now get your butt out of my workspace before you manage to blow yourself up."

Kakashi nodded and left, letting Duo have the final word. While he was slow and clumsy, the boy obviously knew something about dangerous weapons. For the meantime, he'd ignore anything odd and wait for the Hokage to find a way to send him back.

------------------------------

"Listen Duo…"

"Naruto."

"Fine… Naruto… I don't know why G sent you with us knowing your condition," Heero sighed. "But unfortunately, you're here and you have a duty to perform."

Naruto shoved away the blueprints that Heero had attempted to stick under his nose for the thirty-seventh time that hour. "I've seen that damn map already," he said angrily. Besides that, the text was making him carsick, something he was certain no one would enjoy. "Main control room. Put down the… thing… push the button and get out."

"Thermal explosive," Wufei corrected from his other side. "Not thing."

"And you don't just push a button. You have to enter the proper sequence of numbers," Heero said, looking ready to throw a fit.

"It just blows up, right?" Naruto asked. "I can do that without the 'thermos' thing."

"Duo…"

"Naruto."

"Take this seriously baka!" Heero roared. "You need to complete your part of the mission. The code is zero, eight…"

"Nine, two, one, four, one, nine, three," Naruto finished angrily. They had drilled him over it for more than an hour and he was tired of listening to it. "And stop harassing me about being caught. Stealth may not be my strong point, but you guys suck at it worse than I do."

"They have guns," Wufei supplied, trying to convey the dangerous situation they were entering. "Do you remember how to respond to a gun?"

"Find cover and return fire," Naruto parroted back. His answer of 'dodge the bullets and beat them senseless' had not been appreciated, though that's what he planned to do once out of their sight. "Drop me off and I'll take care of it."

"We're at the base," Trowa said. "D… Naruto is the first drop."

Naruto barely waited until the vehicle stopped before he was out the door and running for the entrance they had pointed out for him. He watched the other four skid away, changing his course the moment they were out of sight. Rather than picking locks and avoiding security, he nimbly climbed to the top of the building and paced off to where he needed to be. With a few simple chakra circles, he dropped from floor to floor until he landed in the middle of the room he was ordered to destroy. Four armed men rounded on him and Naruto gave them a shit-eating grin, strangely identical to Duo's.

"Kage bunshin no jutsu!"

Rather than one Naruto to deal with, the four men now faced with almost two dozen, all that could fit in the small room. The battle never even took place. The four hapless men were beaten unconscious in roughly two point three seconds and the explosive was planted and keyed to fire. Feeling a little guilty, Naruto banished his clones and took the four men with him as he exited the building and took off to gain distance, one man over each shoulder and one under each arm.

About a mile out, Naruto ditched his passengers and watched the fireworks from the base he had abandoned. His companions had explosives of their own. He idly wondered what they were doing and why theirs weren't going off.

_Go back and check on them,_ Shinigami suggested.

_They have weapons,_ Naruto objected, referring both to his friends and the entire base.

_You have speed, your jutsus, and you're invincible with me here._

_Define invincible,_ Naruto demanded.

_If it's not fatal in the first few seconds, I can fix it._

That was all Naruto needed. After making sure his passengers were still asleep… well unconscious… thus otherwise unable to report his location, he slowly headed back to the base. He didn't know where to meet the others anyways and he was getting bored sitting on his ass.

Naruto circled the base a few times, slowly moving further away with every sweep. There were soldiers swarming the area, but he almost lazily avoided them, not eager to make his presence known to many angry men with guns. The sun was beginning to rise and he still had not found the four he'd come in with.

_Check on them my ass!_ Naruto snapped. _I can't find them!_

_One or all of them may have been captured,_ Shinigami explained calmly.

_WHAT? After lecturing me for three hours on just that?_ Naruto asked indignantly. Only silence answered him and he stalked straight up to the base. "Henge!" he said under his breath, looking exactly like the other soldiers.

Wandering the halls like he belonged there, he occasionally changed his appearance to match people he noticed were of higher ranks judging by how others reacted to them. When he finally got tired of searching, he stopped someone at random.

"You!" Naruto barked. The young soldier jumped but fell into a tense ready position.

"Sir!" the man said reflexively.

"Who was captured?" Naruto asked, beginning to have fun with the deception.

"Sir? You don't know?"

"You are in no position to question me!" Naruto barked, hoping he was correct in assuming that his false appearance had the power to shove people around. "Are you?"

"No, sir! Sorry, sir!!"

"Was anyone captured?" he repeated harshly, amused when the man flinched and actually shivered.

"Yes, sir! Four, sir!"

_All of them?_ Naruto wondered. "Where are they being detained?" He'd gotten to use one of the new terms he'd picked up while being yelled at. Ninja never 'detained' anyone. They either killed them of had them sealed and guarded.

"They're in the fourth block of sublevel two, sir!" the man answered nervously.

Naruto nodded and left without dismissing the soldier, who by then was shaking like a leaf. Either whoever he was imitating was a damn scary person, or Naruto had just been making his favorite face again. The 'burn a hole in the back of Uchiha's dumb head' glare of pure malice.

Sublevel two. He could do that. He'd stared at the blueprints long enough to remember where that was. He headed directly for the fourth block, ignoring the strange looks he was earning from some of the people of that level. Since nobody seemed to have the never to approach him, he pretended they didn't exist and eyed a hall lined with thick metal doors.

"Commander? What are you doing here, sir? Weren't you heading the search for the other one?"

"I have business with the prisoners," Naruto said calmly as though he had every right to be there. "Which room are they in?"

"You ordered them placed in different cells," the man said, his hand shifting towards his gun. He had stopped saying 'sir' and the polite tone had disappeared from his voice.

"Kage bunshin no jutsu!" Naruto yelled, not letting the soldiers get any further with their defense. He had counted twenty armed men and in typical Naruto fashion, set out to bury his opponents in numbers.

Two hundred and fifty transformed Naruto clones swept the hall. Shots were fired and a good number of the shadow clones burst into smoke. Naruto himself held back to keep from being shot, correctly assuming that the soldiers would be too mortified to think of going after him.

The battle was over in seconds, but Naruto had no doubt that the entire base knew he was there now. He ran up to the first door and delivered a stolid kick to knock it off its hinges. All he accomplished was a new bruise on his foot and a jarred hip. He hopped around on his good leg, cursing his head off, using all the fun words that would have made Ebisu faint on the spot.

Naruto glared death at the windowless door, extremely miffed. His foot hurt and he hadn't even left a dent. Now it was just personal. He began building chakra in his hands, feeling tendrils of black whorl through his forming jutsu. It seemed that Duo's body was too weak to perform any sort of jutsu without Shinigami's support.

"Rasengan!" he roared.

The door wasn't knocked off its hinges, but there was now a nice hole through the middle of it, easily large enough to fit a slender person. Trowa was on the other side, staring at him with absolutely huge eyes.

"I hope you can work the doors. I don't want to have to do that again," Naruto sighed, waving Trowa out.

The banged brunette scrambled past him quickly and started shuffling through the unconscious soldiers until he'd located a metallic card. With a few swipes, he triggered three other doors to slide open.

"Oh, sure, cheat," Naruto muttered under his breath.

Heero, Wufei and Quatre joined them, robbing the senseless guards of their guns and radios. Naruto was a bit confused when his companions unanimously leveled weapons in his direction.

"What?" he asked stupidly.

"Why are you letting us go?" Heero asked suspiciously.

"Huh? Oh, that," Naruto laughed, dropping the transformation without considering how badly the other four would react. Both Heero and Wufei opened fire in shock, catching him in his right shoulder and thigh. The wounds stung terribly, but he'd suffered much worse hits and didn't do much more than stagger a little to the side. "HEY!"

"…Duo?" Quatre ventured uncertainly.

"If I have to correct you on my name one more time…"

"Naruto," Trowa supplied, putting his gun away slowly. "How are you doing this?"

"I'm a ninja, you morons!" Naruto cried out. "Now can we please get out of here before I get shot? Again?" _Shinigami, if you would._

_I'm on it,_ Shinigami responded. With minimal effort, he pushed the bullets free and closed the wounds. The two bullets clinking to the ground, naturally, earned Naruto a fresh wave of disconcerted looks.

"Later," Naruto said, sensing a cluster of weak chakra sources approaching. "In a moment, we're going to have company. We need to go."

"Do you know a way out?" Heero asked, putting his gun away somewhere Naruto couldn't determine in that creepy spandex.

"Mr. 'Stick-Up-The-Ass,' 'You-Better-Remember-The-Damn-Map' Yuy needs a way out?" Naruto squawked. "Damn it, you candy-asses, do I have to do everything?" Without waiting for an answer, he started forming hand seals, muttering obscenities under his breath and glaring at the ceiling. Though he hated using something he'd stolen from Sasuke, he had no choice if he wanted total destruction in one blow. "Chidori!"

The following black blast resulted in a series of holes through the floors and ceilings up to the sky and an immediate swearing contest among the other four teenagers. Surprisingly, Quatre won. Naruto managed to get over his irritation enough to smirk at the horrified looks he had wrangled from his companions.

"Let's go," Naruto said cheerily, knowing full well that no one could follow him if he took off through the hole, so he waited on their feedback.

"Fuck. That isn't Duo," Wufei muttered, looking decidedly sick to the stomach.

"Well, DUH!" Naruto responded accordingly, drawing out the final word to make his point, as if the volume alone didn't work. "What have I been telling you dumb-asses?" Annoyed again, he started through a series of simple seals, flipping a chakra rope out of his escape route. He glared at the frozen pilots. "Can you screw-offs at least climb while I deal with our company?"

"Company?" poor Quatre parroted, diverting his gaze from Naruto to where the ninja was looking. A dozen Oz soldiers were clustering in the hall, pointing guns in their direction while probably a hundred more packed the stairs behind them.

"Oh, screw it," Naruto sighed. He resignedly folded forward at the waist to place both palms firmly on the floor. He sniffed decisively. "Doton: Doryuuheki!"

A two-foot thick wall of stone shot up between their small group and the armed soldiers, separating them entirely and continuing its trek towards the sky. Standing up, he waved irately at his rope of chakra.

"Get your asses up the rope," he growled. Exchanging quick looks, they obeyed.

------------------------------

Team Seven had been scheduled to meet at seven in the morning, so naturally, it was nine and only then had Kakashi arrived. As was his habit, he started off with a pathetic excuse.

"Sorry I'm late. There was some confusion between my hair drier and a hot glue gun… Wait a second. Where's Duo?"

Sakura managed to cut off her scream of 'Liar!' to properly answer the question, thought she still looked thoroughly miffed.

"He never showed up," she groused.

Kakashi sighed. Two hours late and Duo still hadn't made it there before him. He had expected the boy to be caught up enough in his work to be late, but not by this much.

"Let's go get him," the jounin said wearily. The were saved from hunting down the stray Gundam pilot when Duo ambled up, toting his own weight in gadgets that they couldn't even begin to identify.

"Sorry I'm late," Duo called out cheerfully. Kakashi instantly recognized the fact that Duo had been monitoring the area and was readily mocking him. "I shorted out my alarm clock when I overloaded by thermal scythe."

Kakashi blinked. Not only was Duo mocking him , he was using an excuse that no one could call him a liar over because no one understood what the hell he had said. That and Duo had a smug, crafty look that was simply unfitting Naruto's face. Between the display of intelligence and the embarrassing taunting, it was blatantly obvious that the blond was not who he appeared to be. Sasuke was the first to get over that fact, not as wary as Kakashi or as jumpy as Sakura.

"Damn it, dobe," Sasuke griped. "You could at least try to be on time."

"It's 'Duo' not 'dobe' and if you want me to be on time, tell _him_ to be on time" Duo countered, nodding his head towards Kakashi. The silver-haired jounin was quick to respond, used to taunts over his constantly being late.

"We reserve the right to refer to anyone who blows up alarm clocks as 'dobe'," Kakashi said drolly, amused that the boy looked so startled. His arguments obviously involved him ripping on people who didn't properly stand up for themselves.

"This from someone that confused a hair drier and a hot glue gun?" Duo challenged, a bit sour that he was outnumbered by his supposed allies. His grin suddenly got naughty. "And please don't inform us if you confuse your lube for superglue."

Kakashi bit off a sarcastic comment, knowing he would be bested again by the twerp, even having the piece of mind to hold up a hand to keep Sasuke or Sakura from retorting and possibly getting worse out of the blond. Duo seemed to be exactly like Naruto, only more intelligent and less reserved in displaying his perversion. The obnoxious vindictive factor seemed to be about the same.

However interesting it might be to watch, the last thing he needed was two ninja in combat against a demolitions expert. He knew a bomb specialist when he saw one, even if it was of an entirely different style than what he was familiar with. Even if he ignored the explosives, the simple word 'thermal' sufficiently unnerved him. Adding it to 'scythe' really didn't help matters.

"We have a mission to finish," Kakashi said, settling on a line of conversation that hopefully wouldn't end up with his organs splattered over a ten-mile radius. After the minimal display he had received of a half-constructed weapon made of sand and reeds, he had absolutely no wish to test the finished product of a true weapon in combat.

"Thieves and library books, right?" Duo queried, earning himself a number of flat looks.

"A stolen ninja scroll," Sakura corrected.

Like Kakashi, she was eyeing the assortment of items Duo was carrying. The one that had her the most perplexed was the long metal pole that was strapped to his back. She had seen quarterstaffs and had even used one in training, but couldn't see the purpose of a metal one since it would be too heavy to wield effectively in combat. He had two large duffle bags as well, the straps pressing deeply into his shoulders from the hefty-looking and very full bags. Wires and tiny bars peeked out of his jacket as well, making entirely no sense to the pink-haired shinobi. Kakashi seemed to be taking inventory as well, though Sasuke had developed an attitude of 'It's not Naruto, screw him,' and barely looked at the blond.

"Are you going to be able to carry all of that?" the jounin asked, eyeing the bags and bulging pockets.

"We're going out to Siem. Not much there to work with," Duo said dismissively.

"We're going to Turan Village," Kakashi corrected.

Duo shrugged. "Fine," he allowed lazily. "But the stolen scroll is in Siem."

"Damn it, dobe. Don't pretend to know what you're doing," Sasuke snapped.

Kakashi stared at him for a few seconds, not quite so quick to dismiss him. "How do you even know the names of the villages?" he asked slowly.

"I have a map," Duo answered with a smirk.

"And how do you know where the scroll is?"

"I'm dying to hear that as well," Sakura muttered under her breath. Duo merely offered them his best shit-eating grin.

"Secret of the trade," he evaded, amused that his answer seemed to piss the three ninja off. It was more fun to irritate them than to give a real answer. That and there was no way in hell he'd tell them that he was getting his information from Kyuubi. The demonic fox didn't seem to be overly popular in Kohana. How the walking ball of fur knew was anybody's guess.

_What?_ Kyuubi asked innocently. _The sooner this stupid mission is over, the sooner we can get back to finding a way to get rid of your sorry ass._

While Sakura and Sasuke were busy glaring death at the smug twerp, Kakashi was piecing together how the kid knew what he did. He figured it out rather quickly. He was grateful for the information but wasn't too happy about the source of it. Naturally, the stolen scroll contained a rather forbidden technique that could cause a lot of problems in the wrong hands, and they were worried about who actually had it. Rather than turn down the dubious assistance, he capitulated and cut off his two students, who until then had been on a small tirade about lies, idiots and tampering with missions.

"Do you know who has the scroll?" he asked, stunning the two yelling teenagers. They looked scandalized that he was even listening to the boy.

_Well?_ Duo asked.

_How should I know and why should I care?_ Kyuubi barked. _I already found your stupid scroll. Do some of your own damn grunt work._

"I don't know," Duo summed up. He couldn't resist the chance to tease the fickle demon. _What happened to getting rid of me?_ Kyuubi growled in response and withdrew, unwilling to get into an argument with the smart-ass terrorist.

"You're useful," Sasuke sniped.

"Lets go to Siem then," Kakashi sighed. "It's closer than Turan, but it will still take us most of the week to get there."

"A week!" Duo protested loudly. "Don't you dorks have cars?"

"You've been robbing Kohana blind. I would have thought you'd have noticed," Kakashi said wryly.

Duo noticed that the jounin knew what a car was even if he didn't have one. He made a mental note to steal one if he could find one. Kakashi was apparently following his line of thought.

"You're not stealing one," he said flatly.

"I can't believe that you would dare to rob a ninja in the first place," Sakura said derisively. Duo smirked.

"It's not very hard," he mused, brushing by Kakashi as he started towards the road. Typical Duo style, he had mugged the jounin on the way by just to irk him. He eyed the orange book as he opened it and was immediately traumatized by an illustration he found on the page. "Damn," he exclaimed. "What kind of kinky pervert are you?"

Kakashi only then noticed that his pack had been raided by the pickpocket. He plucked his copy of 'Flirting Paradise' out of Duo's hands with a muttered, "Give me that." Duo grinned unrepentantly and continued walking.

"See?" Duo teased. "It's a piece of cake."

"Just try not to blow us up," Kakashi returned, not above taunting the boy back.

"Reading that book of yours and you're lecturing me on 'blowing up'?" Duo asked innocently. Kakashi almost tripped.

"And you're calling ME a pervert?"

"Are we going to have to listen to this for the next week?" Sakura asked, trying to interrupt the conversation before it became truly frightening.

"Fine, fine," Duo capitulated, starting for the road again. Knowing that they would be walking for a long time, he pulled a device out of the duffle bag on his right and began working on it, pulling the occasional wire or small tool out. When one of the panels lit up, he automatically had the entire team's undivided attention.

"Buster rifle?" Kakashi asked, remembering what Duo had called the other item that glowed in that same eerie fashion.

"Pulse rifle," Duo corrected idly. That, however, was of no help whatsoever. Of the three of them, only Kakashi even knew what a gun was. The alterations and enhancements made the jounin wary. The teenager could easily think himself capable of going on the offense, but at the same time, he had no visible defense. Kakashi wondered if Duo knew just how vulnerable he was.

"But what is it?" Sakura pressed, walking along beside him. Her curiosity had surpassed her irritation and she willingly dropped the argument. Smirking, Duo hung it over his right shoulder by a strap to free up his hands so he could work on it more easily.

"I'll show you when I finish it," Duo allowed, knowing she wouldn't understand a direct detailed response.

"Try not to blow us up while doing so," Kakashi said blandly.

"I know what I'm doing," Duo said, trying to sound annoyed. Under his breath, he added something just to watch them twitch. "And if I don't, blowing up is the least of our worries."

"And what does that mean?" Sakura exploded, the first to get worked up. Duo was having entirely too much fun with her. He suspected that he enjoyed taunting her simply because of the massive quantities of pink associated with the girl. There was just something about girls in pink chasing the most emotionally constipated guy they could find that just really made him want to turn up his annoying skills to full power.

"We wouldn't be blown up," Duo said practically, as though he wasn't having entirely too much fun. "We'd be incinerated." Everybody moved away from him on the road.

"Stop teasing them," Kakashi sighed. "You may need their help if we're attacked."

"Let them try it," Duo said cheerfully, snapping a panel to the pulse rifle closed. _In the meantime, could you show me exactly what has them so worked up? For starters, what is chakra?_

_Very well, brat,_ Kyuubi said. He started talking and showing images as the group traveled. Sakura and occasionally Sasuke would speak to him as well, and he responded absently, his attention fixed more on what the fox was saying than anything else. Kakashi just watched, aware of where Duo's attention was focused, and it clearly was not on the device in his hands or the other teenagers.

------------------------------

With only five people in actual combat against the entire Oz organization, the Gundam pilots were quick to latch onto any advantage they could get. Even if that advantage was a hyperactive dingbat of a ninja. Currently, Heero was reporting to J while Quatre and Trowa poured over maps and diagrams. Wufei, much to his chagrin, had landed the task of coaching Naruto on every military tactic in use. He was drilling the other boy on base layouts, mobile suit formations and vulnerable points on mobile dolls when Naruto finally snapped.

"I've had enough!" he wailed, clutching his head and falling over backwards. "I'll never remember all of this. Why do I even need to know the structural integrity of twelve types of metal in zero gravity? Last I checked, I can't fly!"

"Oh, the flying lessons," Quatre said distractedly. "I was supposed to get you that Cessna."

"Cessna?" Naruto yelped.

_Airplane,_ Shinigami supplied.

"Are you people listening to me? I don't need to know any of this! Just point at something and tell me to blow it up," Naruto complained. "I agreed to help you defeat the Unification of the Nymphomaniacs…"

"Organization of the Zodiac," Trowa smirked.

"Whatever," Naruto griped. "But I didn't agree to listen to all of this crap until my brain was the consistency of steamed lettuce!"

"Your brain already was the consistency of steamed lettuce," Wufei sniped. "Now would you shut up and pay attention?"

Naruto glared, plopping back into his seat with a muttered, "Gonna feed your ass to a toad…" Wufei intended to ignore the threat as a moronic one when the ninja's face suddenly froze in shock. "My toads!" he yelped, racing outside.

"Toads?" Quatre asked Wufei. The Chinese boy looked ready to beat his head against the wall until the dingbat made sense.

"We're in the middle of the Sahara!" Wufei roared, following his psychotic charge outside. "The only toads here are horny toads and if I find you playing with lizards, I'm going to cram one up your ass!"

His ranting was cut off when Naruto's voice rang through the house at almost deafening levels. "Kuchiyose no Jutsu!" His outburst was followed by a cry of victory and a mortified yelp from Wufei.

"WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!?"

That spurred the other three pilots to abandon what they were doing to locate the source of the commotion. Whatever they had expected to find, that wasn't it. They would have been less surprised to have found the two teenagers knocking boots. Hell, they would have been less surprised if they found an army of little green men returning Elvis. Of course it couldn't be so simple. Not where Naruto was involved.

Atop the head of a purple and red toad larger than a good-sized jeep sat Naruto, grinning maniacally. The pilots could only stare and sputter.

_Okay, what is it and why are we sitting on it?_ Shinigami asked flatly.

"It's a toad," Naruto said proudly. "And I have a contract with them back home. I was trying to see if I could still summon them here."

_Back home,_ Shinigami mused. _Perhaps we can use this to our advantage. If I can establish a link between our worlds, I may be able to switch you two back._

_Great! How long will that take?_

_How should I know? I'm the God of Death, not your damn chauffeur!_ Shinigami retorted. _Go do something useful like put a poison technique on your toad to make him psychedelic._

_I'll consider that,_ Naruto thought, rather amused by the idea. "Come on guys! What do you think of my toad? He could help out!"

"Naruto, a two ton purple toad is likely to be rather visible," Quatre said faintly, trying to think of a nice way to tell the ninja to get rid of the creepy thing.

"We could paint him," Naruto said cheerfully, not taking the hint that the empath really, really did not like the toad.

"You're not painting me," the toad objected. That seemed to overload the poor pilots' 'weird-shit-o-meter' and they scattered amid a good bit of cursing.

"That thing can talk?" Wufei shouted.

Trowa had remained the calmest of the set and was actually eyeing the toad with mute curiosity. His one visible eye had a mischievous look to it, a look that always made Quatre paranoid. It was always the quiet ones.

"How big can these toads get?"

"Well… Gamabunta is about two hundred feet tall and probably about forty tons or so," Naruto mumbled, completely guessing. "But he's no good. He won't listen to me."

"An amphibian that could crush a Gundam on the rampage," Heero summed up, beginning to see what Trowa had in mind. "Can you summon more than one at a time?"

"One Gamabunta is more than enough," Naruto muttered. "Yeah, I can summon more. I'd have to call them one at a time, though."

"That would take too much time," Quatre said, sounding relieved. He did NOT like toads.

"Just do your favorite technique," the toad suggested. No matter what the boy looked like, it was still Naruto's name on the contract.

"On you or me?"

"You," the toad said. "You can go on a summoning spree, accumulate a ton of us and then instantly be out of the way."

"Can you summon anything more dangerous than a frog?" Trowa asked, still trying to follow the plan. Naruto shook his head.

"My contract is with the toads," he said. "But I guess they could transform after they got here."

"Transformation is not possible," Wufei said derisively.

"Is too."

"Is not."

"Is too!" Naruto yelled, jumping down to face off with the Chinese boy. "Henge!"

Naruto vanished in a cloud of smoke, replaced by a buxom brunette vixen. He blew a kiss towards the pilots, watching for the best reaction. It was Wufei, hands down. The Chinese pilot made a strangled noise and suffered a severe nosebleed. Quatre turned bright red and averted his gaze. Trowa, man of zero expressions, actually snickered. A muscle in Heero's cheek twitched and he managed a strangled "baka."

"What good does that do?" Wufei roared.

"I walked right through that last base disguised as some blond named Sex."

"Zechs," Trowa snorted.

"That's what I said," Naruto protested. "They only caught me because he was somewhere else. Playing with his Tool Grease or something."

"Tallgeese," Trowa corrected. Naruto's constant mistakes in names and terms were quickly becoming amusing.

Naruto waved off the correction and finally, blessedly, dropped the transformation. Though it was amusing to get the other four distracted, he needed them able to work so he could get home. On that objective, he banished the toad since it made them so uncomfortable, and in Quatre's case, panicked. In a puff of smoke, he returned to looking like the Duo they knew.

"Okay. Your plans suck, but I have one," Naruto said, doing everything within his power to avoid them going back to their droning lessons. "Take one of my clones to a base and I'll have him duplicate and summon toads. They can destroy the base and I can banish the clones. I'm not even a target then."

"Clones?" Wufei asked warily. Truck-sized frogs he could handle, but more idiots? "Are you suggesting that you can make more of yourself?"

"Want me to show you?"

"NO!" all four pilots answered simultaneously.

"I could keep it small," Naruto offered, eyes glittering mischievously. _Hey, Shin Guard._

_Shinigami, you idiot._

_How many copies can I make with your power and still have each of them summon a toad?_

_And I do that how often?_ Shinigami asked sarcastically.

"And how many is 'small'?" Heero asked, stupidly taking the bait. "Tell us, don't show us." Rats.

"Five is my normal starting number," Naruto admitted. "I've never had to go more than a few hundred, but I'm pretty sure that I could."

_Yikes. A few hundred? Of you?_

_You stay out of this,_ Naruto griped.

"A few hundred of you?" Wufei unknowingly echoed. Shinigami laughed his ass off. "What happens to them?"

"They disappear when they're too damaged or when I no longer need them," he explained. He garnered a number of disbelieving looks. "What? Do you want me to show you?"

"No," Quatre said quickly. "It's just that you seem more like a sorcerer than a ninja."

Naruto smirked. "Call me what you want. Just tell me what to blow up and then help me get home like we agreed."

"We'll find something for you," Heero said, going back inside. Quatre eagerly followed, disliking the toads and fearing that Naruto would summon another. Wufei bailed simply because he was tired of dealing with the strangeness. Trowa just got an even creepier expression than the one he had sported earlier.

"So tell me," Trowa said. "What other offensive techniques can you perform?" Naruto lit up like a light bulb, eager to talk to someone in this odd world that was interested in him.

"Well, for starters, there's Rasengan…"

------------------------------

Team Seven was in the middle of yet another argument between Sakura and Duo. For whatever reason, the pilot seemed delighted in seeing the ninja girl riled up and took every chance to get her in that state. Not that Kakashi and Sasuke were immune, but they weren't targeted nearly as often. Unfortunately, the topic of the current argument had escalated to almost deafening levels thanks to Sakura. The topic of the argument, sadly enough, was Sasuke.

"I may not have breasts, but my ass is tighter," Duo said cheerfully.

"SASUKE IS NOT ATTRACTED TO MEN! ESPECIALLY NOT YOU!" Sakura screamed.

This had been going on for nearly an hour. The sun had started to set and the moment it had become too murky for Duo to see to work, he had started in on Sakura. Once the topic had come up, the girl had instantly exploded. Sasuke had turned red and moved far in front of the group, trying his best not to listen to the two psychos argue over who he was going to sleep with when they set up camp.

Kakashi was just trying not to laugh. Logically, the jounin knew that noise of that amplitude was probably a bad idea, but he really was having fun watching Sakura's blood pressure rise to dangerous levels. He couldn't quite describe the color of her face. At that point, no one could even begin to understand her anymore, and Duo had abandoned the argument to laugh. That only spurred Sakura to become even louder.

The entire group was so distracted that no one knew what was happening until their situation was beyond critical. Six sound-nin dropped out of the trees and rushed them. Sakura was hit immediately with a thrown kunai, the hilt protruding from her left shoulder. Sasuke and Kakashi managed to dodge and mount a weak defense, but they were too late to keep two of the sound-nin from snagging Duo and hauling him out into the woods. Muffled cursing vanished as the pilot was abducted.

Kakashi pulled out his best attacks instantly, knowing that he was in a bad situation all around. If he went after Duo, assuming that he could even make it past the sound-nin, he'd be abandoning his students to certain death. If he stayed to fight, he doubted that he would be able to find Duo. Desperate for time, he uncovered his Sharingan and launched himself at the nearest sound-nin. He was preparing to Chidori the man's ass when the battle came to an abrupt halt.

------------------------------

Duo was pissed, plain and simple. Despite the fact that he spent most of his time riling Sakura into a killing mood to gleefully watch her face turn a lovely shade of 'I'm-going-to-kill-you' puce, he liked her. Of the six men who had attacked them, one had stabbed Sakura with a thick throwing knife, and two others were attempting to kidnap him.

Ticked, Duo wrenched his hand at a weird angle to access a weapon on his back. Though unable to draw or aim it, he pulled the trigger several times in rapid succession. The pulse rifle was designed not to kill, but a series of vicious blows to the kidneys is enough to make anyone lose their hold. The sound-nin dropped him with a strangled yelp, clearly not expecting the attack. Completely disabled from the impact to his gut, he staggered a few feet away, leaving his companion to deal with the pissed pilot.

The distraction was enough to allow Duo to roll to his feet with the pulse rifle in hand. Aiming for the non-injured ninja, he snapped off a shot just as the man raised his hands and returned fire, releasing a small burst of force designed to knock Duo off his feet and little more. The pulse rifle ended up taking the blow, the combination of his shot and the attack blowing the last two inches off of the end of the barrel.

Damaged, the pulse rifle discharged the entirety of the confined charge. An explosion rocked the area, incinerating everything near the vicinity of the muzzle. The backlash launched both the damaged gun and Duo over forty feet, thankfully clear of the initial explosion.

Dropping the totaled weapon, the Gundam pilot sprinted back towards the original site of the battle, pulling a new weapon as he ran.

The night sky lit up in a blinding flash followed by an immediate shockwave and an earth-shaking boom. The blast was strong enough to knock all of the combatants off their feet. To the east, debris was raining down from a huge column of black smoke. One sound-nin shot off towards the source of the explosion.

The sound-nin made it just into the trees when a small bright light flared up just in front of him. His head flew back into the road, cleanly severed at the neck and fully cauterized. Duo came running out behind the corpse, looking decidedly singed and covered in soot. In his hands was the metal rod that had mystified Sakura earlier, now clearly a scythe, though the blade was a glowing bluish white light.

The three remaining sound-nin split up to deal with them, one blocking Kakashi, one keeping Sasuke and Sakura busy, and the third heading straight for Duo. The blond gracelessly but savagely swung the scythe at the sound-nin which the ninja caught effortlessly, making the rest of Team Seven sure that the first victory had been a stroke of luck resulting from sure surprise. They were proved wrong instantly.

Duo dropped one hand to his hip and drew a revolver, unloading it into a surprised sound-nin. His method of fighting was so unusual that the ninja couldn't seem to compensate quickly enough.

Dropping the empty gun, Duo made a beeline towards the sound-nin that Sasuke had just kicked in the head when he jumped at the sound of the gunshots. Scythe leading, Duo attacked, the weapon again being caught before connecting. This time, he flipped a switch on the handle and dropped it. The thermal blade flickered off and an enormous jolt of electricity shot through the sound-nin. He went rigid, smoke rising from his clothes and hair before collapsing, fingers still forcibly coiled around the shaft of the scythe.

Cackling, Duo rounded on the final sound-nin still rounding off with Kakashi. The solitary ninja was smart enough to realize that he was outnumbered four to one, one of which had brutally killed his five comrades. He ran like hell.

Duo shoved past a stunned Kakashi, whipping an enormous gun off his back using the sling for leverage to snap it into his hands. He flipped a switch that resounded in a popping click followed by a loud deep hum that quickly built up into a high-pitched shrieking whine. Light flickered along panels on the sides, a ball of blinding power forming at the opening at the end. Bracing his legs for the recoil, Duo pulled the trigger.

A blast of sheer energy rocketed forward, leveling a path over twenty feet wide and five feet deep for almost half a mile. The following shockwave caused Team Seven to stagger and the recoil shoved Duo back several yards, his feet leaving trenches in the soil. After regaining his balance, he raised his gaze towards the tunnel of destruction he had unleashed, squinting at the smoldering molten path.

"Did I get him?" he called eagerly.

"Holy shit," Sakura managed weakly from behind. Her eyes were the size of saucers. Even Sasuke's jaw had dropped.

"Probably," Kakashi managed to answer, trying to decide whether to stare at Duo's weapon or look for the escaped sound-nin. The pilot noticed the looks and grinned maniacally, powering down his gun and slinging it across his shoulders once more. He started back towards Sakura to check on her, slapping Kakashi on the shoulder as he passed by.

"And you were worried about the poor little assassin," Duo teased.

"Assassin?" Sasuke asked, jumping on the word.

"I thought you told them," Duo said wryly, not really minding that the information had the other two teenagers staring at him like he had grown an extra head. He was used to it.

"Not everything," Kakashi sighed. Duo nodded in acceptance, returning to his original task.

"Are you okay, Sakura?" he asked. "Sparky here got you with a knife when he showed up." He motioned towards the smoking corpse still holding his scythe.

"Fine!" Sakura answered hastily, yanking the kunai free and stepping back. Duo was a bit shocked that she seemed to be afraid of him.

"Cool it," he chuckled, continuing on his course. "I'm on your side, you know. Now lose the shirt." He was immediately hit upside the head.

"Pervert!" Sakura roared.

"You don't have anything I haven't seen," Duo said placidly, grinning despite the fact that he had a new lump on his skull. "I have medical training."

"She can handle it," Kakashi interrupted before the situation could escalate into another fight. Duo gave up willingly since they seemed sure of what they were doing to whatever extent.

"So, what do we do with Sparky, Stumpy and Swiss Cheese here?" Duo asked, waving towards the corpses. "And who are these weenies anyways?"

"You killed them without even knowing who they were?" Sakura asked, rather loudly. Duo looked at her like she was insane.

"They stuck a knife in you and carried me off in a headlock," Duo said flatly. "I was going to just beat the crap out of them, but they started doing that finger wiggling thing at me and I had no choice."

_Finger wiggling?_ Kyuubi asked, amused.

"What exactly did you use against them?" Kakashi asked slowly. Duo looked vexed.

"I was just using a simple pulse rifle, but one of them caused it to overload. It looked like they were using their hands to fight the same way my rifle works," Duo said, his explanation falling into idle musing. His mission reports were never entirely coherent.

"How exactly does a pulse rifle work?" Kakashi asked, interrupting the rambling.

"Exactly like it sounds," Duo shrugged. "It's a pulse rifle. It pulses."

"So you basically used sound against a sound-nin?" Sasuke said drolly.

"In my defense, it worked great when they were dumb enough to cut the end off of it," he chuckled. "Besides, I didn't see you three winning either."

"Baka!" Sakura shouted. Duo smirked. At least she wasn't afraid of him anymore. "You only won because you cheated!"

"Now then," Duo continued, cheerfully ignoring the insult to his gadgets. "You didn't answer my question. What do we do with the vulture meat here?" He motioned towards one of the corpses, noticing that the electrocuted ninja still had his thermal scythe. He pulled it free, ignoring the shock he received from the residual electricity still in the weapon, flipping it off to allow it to recharge.

"We'll bury them here," Kakashi said, eyeing the trench Duo had created. The blond raised his eyebrows.

"No investigation at all?"

"Sound-nin attack fairly regularly," the jounin explained. "Besides, it's rather obvious what they wanted."

"Yeah, well…"

"Where are the other two?"

"If you want to sweep up the ashes, that's your prerogative," Duo deliberately brushed some of the soot from his arm. Kakashi eyed his buster rifle, causing the pilot to chuckle. "Other one," he corrected. "Had they damaged this one, none of us would be here." That created a collective flinch from the rest of his team.

"Maybe you shouldn't carry those," Sasuke said flatly, clearly unhappy that items like that were anywhere near him, even less so that they were near Duo.

"Bah," Duo dismissed. "The fun ones aren't even finished."

"Fun ones?" Sakura asked, honestly worried.

"You just got lucky, Duo. You shouldn't brag," Kakashi finally said. "Any ninja who has seen you fight even once would be able to defeat you."

"Really?" Duo asked, eyes glittering with an evil look. "You've seen me fight. Could you defeat me?"

"Yes," came the three-way chorus. Duo folded his arms and tilted his head at a cocky angle, smirking. He moved three large paces back.

"Hit me," he said simply.

"Dobe."

"We are not going to hit you," Sakura seconded.

"If any one of you can hit me in the next five minutes, I'll shut up for the rest of the trip," Duo offered. He knew quite well that his yammering was annoying the crap out of Sasuke, and he expected the dark-haired boy to be the first to snap. He wasn't disappointed.

Sasuke darted forward with the intent to punch Duo quickly in the gut. The offer of silence was just too good to pass up. Kakashi and Sakura saw Duo's delighted grin at the attack, but neither had the time to warn Sasuke that the blond seemed far too happy for someone about to be punched. Sasuke let fly.

And promptly took a flight of his own. An electrical jolt, weaker than the one that had killed the sound-nin, shot through Sasuke as his fist landed just short of Duo's stomach. The electricity caused all of Sasuke's reflexes to fire and he fell over after a clumsy lurch back. Duo let out a victory cry and pumped both hands in the air, only then displaying that he had been fiddling with something wired into his jacket. Flat on his butt, Sasuke just blinked dazedly, his hair standing slightly on end.

"It works! Take that G! I stabilized the field without blowing myself up!" Duo cheered. "I didn't even need your fancy-ass lab to do it!"

Seeing Duo cheering like a moron and dancing around, Kakashi casually noted that the teenager's hands were no longer in his jacket. Moving forward swiftly, he punched Duo in the back of the skull. The blond clutched his head and glared.

"What was that for?" Duo yelped. Kakashi smiled, eyebrow arching up happily.

"Shut up."

------------------------------

Naruto was stuck to the wall, eyes scrunched shut while Wufei and Trowa attempted, entirely unsuccessfully, to pry him free. The pilots had moved in to strike a base with their carefully organized plan. Unfortunately, Naruto didn't seem fond of heights and was clinging to the wall of the plane for dear life.

"It doesn't matter where you stand, baka!" Wufei roared, hands wedged under Naruto's shoulder and both feet braced on the wall as he struggled to pull the brunette free. Even with his intensive efforts, he couldn't even budge the other boy. Naruto wouldn't even open his eyes.

"We won't be able to circle the base," Heero called over, looking up from his laptop. "We're almost there. Let go of the wall."

"We can still turn back," Quatre called from the cab. "We're low enough that their radars still haven't seen us."

"Turn around!" Naruto squealed. The plane was creeping him out more than his frogs did Quatre. Plain and simple, ninja did not fly. Trowa cuffed him upside the head.

"Just do it and we'll go," the usually silent pilot said, attempting to use logic to get the panicked ninja in action. The words fell on deaf ears.

"I need a decision," Quatre called urgently.

"A few seconds and we'll turn around and land," Trowa wheedled. He'd spent so long listening to Naruto brag about his techniques that he was eager to see one. The chuunin seemed to freaked out to oblige him though, and judging by his grip, would be for a long time.

_I already told you that you can't be hurt!_ Shinigami barked. _Stop making me look so bad!_

Even with so many orders and pleas, amazingly it was Wufei who finally managed to convince him to let go of the wall.

"Do your job, you coward!"

"I am not a coward!" Naruto snapped back. Wufei picked up on the temperament instantly. He exchanged a look with Heero, signaling the cobalt-eyed teenager to move into the cockpit to keep the plane on course no matter what.

"Then why are you clinging to the wall like a baby?" Wufei continued, switching tactics. Instead of pleading with the brunette, he was now attempting to pick a fight.

"Who are you calling a baby?!?"

"The only person here too scared to do his job!"

"I am not scared!" Hello, testosterone.

"Then why won't you fight, baka?"

"I will then!"

Naruto stalked across the plane to the still closed door, looking downright pissed. Wufei smirked at his back, relieved that he had found the boy's temper. He was not so relieved when Naruto formed a rapid seal and held it, a pitch-black aura beginning to build around the brunette. Steel creaked, warping under the strange energy. The plane bucked in the air, steadying after a moment of turbulent flight.

"What in the hell are you doing back there?" Quatre protested loudly.

"Fifteen seconds until we pass the base," Heero called.

"We're blowing the hatch!" Wufei called as a warning. Trowa latched on to the back of Naruto's shirt and braced them both. Normally, only one or two of the pilots would be in a single plane, but it had taken all four of them to wrestle their psychotic ninja into the back of a small jet.

"Remember the depressurization," Trowa told Naruto, trying to settle the jumpy teenager in advance. Wufei threw the lever, releasing the side door. Air rushed from the small plane, causing Naruto to stagger and lose hold of his chakra.

"Now, Naruto!" Wufei called. They couldn't circle back without risking being shot.

_Move!_ Shinigami yelled, finally spurring the braided boy into action.

"Kage bunshin no jutsu!" Naruto bellowed, creating a hoard of replicas outside the jet in free fall.

"Allah," Quatre breathed, the only one even able to still form coherent thoughts. Over three hundred copies of the hyperactive ninja had burst into existence. Almost unified down to the tiniest movement, they nipped their thumbs, performing a few lightning quick seals. Even from their already impressive distance away from the jet, their screaming could be heard.

"Kuchiyose no jutsu!"

Enormous toads began to appear out of thin air, Gamabunta among them. The clones were already puffing away, useless as Naruto became entirely too far away to sustain them, though the already summoned frogs remained. Naruto slumped back, practically sitting on Trowa as he plunked down. Wufei pulled the lever to shut the door, staring at the video screens.

The base was in chaos. Gamabunta had drawn his sword and was turning the area into the world's largest heap of scrap metal. Those that didn't have weapons used their tongues to throw things, like the mobile suits, into the main buildings or into other suits. And every last one without exception was sure to crush as many things as possible while they hopped around.

Naruto just laid on the floor, panting in utter exhaustion. Almost everyone else was fixated on watching the screens showing the base from a satellite Heero had hacked into. Not Quatre. The blond was making it a deliberate point NOT to look at anything except the controls to the jet. He increased their flight speed to just short of mach, the same as before he had slowed while the hatch was open.

Quatre had quietly resigned himself to his fate. He'd help out as much as he was capable, but he did not want to even look at the toads. Desert born and desert bred, in his life's view, toads were simply wrong, especially when they were larger than his Gundam.

------------------------------

Treize was not amused. He could appreciate the thought and energy that was put into the attacks even if he couldn't understand how it was even possible. Eight bases lay in ruin after being flattened by house-sized toads with tempers. Much to his chagrin, Zechs had come up with a name for the peculiar style of combat, which unfortunately seemed to catch on instantly with the troops.

A fly-by frogging.

Cameras had finally caught the culprit on the fourth pass, which had cost them their base in Spain. From the images he could see, Duo Maxwell was hanging out of a plane in a harness, damn near in hysterics and actually glowing black, for all the sense that made. The next shot showed a hundred and ninety seven of him in free fall, still panicking and still surrounded by that vexing black mist. The third picture showed little more than smoke. The fourth and final useful picture only showed an army of mobile suit-sized toads dressed in kimonos.

Treize was completely and utterly stumped.

How did one go about defending oneself from a few hundred armed amphibians larger than the average house? Attacking them didn't seem to work either. The moment they landed a worthwhile hit, the damn things just vanished in a blast of smoke, blinding all of the Oz troops temporarily while the remaining toads just did more damage.

The only thing they could figure out for certain was that Duo Maxwell was to blame. Zechs had organized hundreds of strike teams targeting the braided menace. The only requirement set was that they bring back enough of him to be identified.

------------------------------

"Are we there yet?" Duo asked for the four hundred sixty seventh time.

"NO!" Sakura roared. Duo's eyes glittered evilly. He'd been asking constantly just to get her back to that special shade of puce that clashed so horribly with her bubblegum pink hair. His offer to shut up, sadly, only lasted for about the first day.

"Are we there yet?"

"Ask again and something will be somewhere," Sasuke snapped. He was quickly coming to the conclusion that Duo was more obnoxious than Naruto ever dreamed of being. Fortunately, or unfortunately at times when he was trying to be a pest, Duo was also smarter than Naruto, which is why he understood the direct threat to his person. Sadly enough for the group, he didn't seem to care.

"Can we stop in Tsuki for something to eat?" Duo said, rather predictably.

"If we keep traveling, we can reach Siem just after nightfall," Kakashi said patiently.

"Why are we headed for Siem?" Duo queried, knowing full well that it would create at least one major argument.

"Because you said that the missing scroll was in Siem!" Sakura exploded. Bull's-eye.

"Did I say it was going to stay there?" Duo asked sweetly.

"Where is it?" Kakashi asked wearily.

"Tsuki," Duo said cheerfully. "So can we get something to eat?" One-track mind there.

"As soon as we get the scroll," Kakashi put in quickly for two reasons. The first was to stifle his two more temperamental students. The second was to attempt to get the loud-mouthed brain slug to reveal the location of the scroll if at all possible.

The Gundam pilot eyed the city he could see a little ways down the road, no more than an hour's walk.

_Or a one-minute hop,_ Kyuubi butted in. Duo hesitated, wondering why the fox was suddenly so helpful. Someone said something sarcastically to him, but his attention was on the demon.

_What do I do?_ Duo asked slowly.

_Naruto can summon toads in your world using your body. I want to see if you can do the same using his body._

_Why?_ Duo asked, not bothering to press how the fox knew what he did anyways.

_Idiot!_ Kyuubi roared. _Shinigami and I think that we can switch you two dumb fucks back through the toads._ That just created more questions for the stray Gundam pilot. The demon could talk to the God of Death? That's all he needed.

"Now what?" Sakura asked testily, irritated that Duo had slowed to a halt.

"One second," Duo said dismissively.

"You were the one in such a hurry!" Sakura roared.

"One sec," Duo sidestepped again, tentatively pressing his fingers together.

_You have to bite one,_ Kyuubi corrected. _There has to be blood involved in this seal. Most ninja use their thumbs._

"And why are you even bothering with seals? You have no idea how to use chakra in the first place!" Sakura yelled, still on the warpath from earlier.

Growling, Duo flipped open his jacket and ghosted his fingers over the tips of colored straws. Picking a blue one, he raised it to his lips and blew a dart at the pink-haired shinobi, striking her skillfully in the neck. She whacked the tiny dart away, opened her mouth to yell at the blond, and promptly passed out.

"Exactly how many 'toys' do you have?" Kakashi asked wearily. He knew that the blond wouldn't intentionally hurt his student, but he was now becoming paranoid just what the nutcase had under wraps. He was ignored.

"Can I have some of those?" Sasuke seconded after checking his sleeping comrade.

"Maybe," Duo mumbled, holding up one hand. "One sec." This time, no one bothered him.

Duo began delicately forming shapes with his fingertips, hesitating, then repeating the series a few times.

_Now bite your thumb, do the movements again and place both palms on the ground,_ Kyuubi instructed patiently.

A bit skeptically, Duo nipped the edge of his thumb, watching it drip a few times. Slowly and carefully, he moved through the proper seals and put both hands on the ground. Nothing happened.

"You have to put some chakra behind it," Kakashi advised, trying to figure out what on earth the boy was up to. He could see no feasible reason for the teenager to even want to summon a toad.

"How do I do that?" There was temporary silence from all sides. Chakra was so intrinsic to the everyday lives of both the ninja and the demon that they were unable to answer immediately.

"It's energy," Kakashi stated, trying to imagine how to describe it to someone who had never even heard of it.

_Just do what you were doing to make me shut up earlier,_ Kyuubi said, making more sense to Duo than Kakashi would be able to manage in a week of lecture. Duo was nodding energetically, preparing himself for another attempt.

"And go faster," Kakashi tacked on, realizing that he was only one of two sources of information for the blond. He didn't bother to move back, expecting Duo to fail spectacularly.

_Kuchiyose no jutsu,_ Kyuubi instructed. _Say it when you put your hands down._

_Do I have to bite myself again?_

_Are you still bleeding?_

_No…_

_Then yes._

Still unsure, Duo surveyed his thumb, noting that the previous nip was long gone. Frowning, he looked for a vein and bit that, doing little damage but making a big mess. Making sure that he sprayed a lot of blood across his hands as he moved, he performed the seals and slammed both hands into the dirt.

"Kuchiyose no jutsu!" Duo said forcefully, trying to push his orneriness and overall temper into what he was doing.

A blast of smoke came from under Duo's palms, shocking him more than his wide-eyed audience. The blond had jumped back and was staring slack-jawed at the clearing dust.

"What the hell is that?"

"Who the hell is he?" the frog countered. It was smaller than a toy poodle, but it was clearly a blue and green toad.

"That thing talks?" Duo asked, surprised.

"At this point, I'm surprised you can," the toad returned, sounding as though he was accustomed to arguing with Naruto.

"And yet you still showed up," Duo argued, feeling ridiculous arguing with a psychedelic colored toad he could easily drop kick.

"I'm trying to figure out what moron has Naruto's body and why he's trying to summon us with no contract!" Duo only followed about half of that, but retorted anyways.

"I'm just doing what the voice in my head told me to," Duo said, pleased to see that he could make even a frog twitch. "I thought I found a way for both of us to get out of this with your help."

"Are you serious?"

"Yes, so call some of your larger friends."

"I don't summon other toads. Even if we knew how to switch you back, it would be your task to get them here!" the toad grumped.

"I am! I called you!"

"I only came to see who had his body!"

"He has mine, so it's fair game!"

Kakashi jumped into the childish argument, finally seeing a purpose to it. "Where is Naruto?"

"Another world."

"I could have told you that," Duo said sourly.

"Then tell us how he got there," the frog snapped.

"I don't even know how _I_ got _here_!"

_You blew yourself up,_ Kyuubi said helpfully.

_So did Naruto,_ Duo sniped. _What did you have in mind for them anyways?_

_I'm not sure, but they can get to both worlds. You work on it._

"And why did you call me here?" the small frog asked testily.

"Because you can get to both worlds."

"Toads have to be summoned," Kakashi said, calling out the flaw in their half-assed plot.

That was it. Summoning.

_You!_ Duo yelled. _When we were both blown up, you called the wrong soul back!_ "We just need to find a way to summon each other. Our demons got mixed up when we both blew up at the same time."

"Naruto wasn't caught in a large enough blast to expel his soul," Sasuke protested. What Duo was suggesting required a lethal blow.

"And I don't really want to kill you to test your theory," Kakashi added, giving his line of thought some credit.

"Do you have a better idea?"

"After the mission, we'll speak to the Hokage. She might be able to summon Naruto here and fix you two," Kakashi temporized, though even he couldn't fathom how to return Duo home even if they were able to switch them back to their proper bodies. For now, he just wanted to redirect the rather dangerous line of thinking.

"Can I go?" the vexed toad asked. Duo flapped one hand at him dismissively and he immediately vanished in a puff of smoke.

"So we're back to square one," Duo groused. "Find the scroll and then get back to my problem." Kakashi nodded. _Where is it?_

_Coming towards us,_ Kyuubi answered.

_Are you serious?_ "It's coming this way."

Kakashi's eyes narrowed in clear irritation because he knew how Duo was getting his information. "Anything else you'd care to tell us?" he asked drolly.

_Do I have to do everything?_ Kyuubi grumbled.

_Yes,_ Duo said. _Since this is your fault._

_You have no proof of that!_

_Just do it._ There was a short pause as the fox grudgingly obeyed, thinking that it was safer to humor the boy to keep him from thinking about his plan to get home. He'd rather have someone a bit less destructive handle that.

_Coming towards us from the east. He has an aura much like your friend. It's his brother, I think,_ Kyuubi reported.

"Hey, that's perfect!" Duo exclaimed.

"You know where it is?" Sasuke asked.

"Yeah. We've as good as have it in our hands," Duo beamed. "Your brother has it." Two mortified expressions killed his buzz and his grin faded into a confused look. "What?" At their feet, Sakura was still unconscious.

------------------------------

Fly-by froggings had ceased as quickly as they had begun. One of the mechanics had determined that if he quadrupled the weight of the mobile suits, largely though enhancing the armor, they could no longer be thrown or overly damaged. The machines were almost sluggish in their movement, but had gained resistance to the psychotic attacks. Frog stomping had quickly gained popularity. Out of respect for his toads, Naruto refused to summon them anymore except to sneak the small ones into Quatre's path so he could watch the blond freak out. What was scary about a foot tall fluorescent orange frog was beyond him, but it was still funny.

After becoming more familiar with the spastic ninja, the pilots had started taking individual missions again, foisting Naruto off on whoever was free. Except for Quatre. After the incident with the soapy frogs bathing in his swimming pool, he refused to take him. Heero currently had him. Naruto was outside training and as long as he kept it reasonable didn't draw attention to them, Heero just ignored him. At that moment, he had summoned a frog in an effort to get a message to Jiraiya. He thought that the pervert ninja might be able to help.

"I told him what happened," a hip-high rust-colored toad said. Naruto had figured that the white-haired letch wouldn't summon anything smaller.

"What did he say?" Naruto asked eagerly.

"He called you an idiot."

"Besides that!"

"And a brat," the toad teased. "Then he laughed his ass off for a few minutes." Naruto looked fit to explode and take everyone down with him, so the toad gave in. "He promised he'd try to help."

"Try? He doesn't know either?" Naruto asked dejectedly.

"Know what?" Heero asked from behind, almost making Naruto jump right out of Duo's skin.

"Don't do that!" Naruto huffed, eyes flashing. Already knowing that the other boy wasn't a talker, he answered the question since it wouldn't be repeated. "I'm trying to find out if anyone back home can fix this."

Heero nodded. "And?"

"Not yet. But your friend Duo is there like we suspected," Naruto said. It was hard to tell on the emotionless teenager, but he thought he saw a flicker of relief in the cobalt eyes at the news of his friend.

"He's on a mission and he has some strange weapons," the toad added.

Heero snorted. He knew what weird things Duo liked to play with. The only reason he usually didn't was because the other pilots threatened to do horrible things to him if he did.

"I have a mission," Heero said bluntly.

"Cool. Where are we going?"

"I'm going to Brazil. Can I trust you to stay here and stay out of trouble?"

"Probably," Naruto allowed, a bit shocked. They'd never offered to leave him alone before. "Just stay inside and no explosions, right?" Heero sighed.

"Close enough," he said. "And stop with the toads!"

"But I need information!" Naruto protested. "How else am I supposed to talk to my friends?"

"They're too visible, baka!"

"You won't let me summon them indoors!"

"That's because you blow holes in the floor!"

The rust-colored frog started chortling, interrupting their argument before Naruto became angry enough to throw some high ninjutsu at Heero. "Summon smaller toads. They'll pass on your messages along to Jiraiya-san." It was so simple that it made both teenagers look rather stupid. He raised his head and squinted into the distance. "And there's one of those flying metal things so I'm leaving." With that, the toad burst into a cloud of smoke and vanished.

Both teenagers turned to face what the toad had been staring at, understanding that 'flying metal thing' probably meant a plane.

"Baka!" Heero roared, running for the safe house, trying to drag Naruto behind him. "You were spotted!" Naruto jerked his hand free and danced back, cackling.

"Spot this!" Naruto crowed triumphantly, swirling his hands expertly. "Rasengan!"

At the roared cry, a whirlwind of destruction shot towards the scouting plane, reducing the small jet to flaming hunks of shrapnel. Heero's eyes became huge.

"Idiot! We might have been able to hide!"

"And how is he going to tell anyone where we are now?"

"Because they keep track of planes!" Heero yelled, once again dragging the braided dunce behind him. He continued his course until Naruto collapsed, shrieking, curling up into an agonized ball. Helpless to do anything else, Heero grabbed him by the back of his shirt and dragged him to the car, hefting him into the back seat. Retrieving his laptop, he gunned the vehicle, relieved that the other teenager had stopped screaming. As far as he could tell, the ninja was unconscious.

------------------------------

Sasuke was desperately slapping Sakura across the cheeks, trying to wake her up no matter how Duo insisted that she wouldn't wake up for at least six hours. Kakashi was trying to prepare some sort of defense while Duo was frantically assembling something that had the jounin more nervous than he already was.

The attack began without warning, over forty armed ninja pouring out of the trees, clearly aiming for the beleaguered Gundam pilot. Duo was the first to respond, yanking his buster rifle into place and loosing a shot. Ninja scattered, but Duo still managed to incinerate about a dozen of them. Twenty kunai thudded into his weapon a second later, several shinobi clearly pissed, but at orders not to kill him. The buster rifle fizzled ominously and Duo hurriedly yanked it from his shoulder and hurled it towards the largest cluster of ninja. He hit the dirt, both arms wrapped around his head.

"FIRE IN THE HOLE!"

Kakashi had seen the last explosion from the smaller gun, and the thought that the larger one was about to explode right next to him was mortifying. He dove onto Sasuke and Sakura, sheltering them as best as he could. He was barely in time as the buster rifle detonated, unleashing a fiery ball of pure energy for almost a hundred foot radius. Half of the ninja had run like hell and half had joined Duo's tactic. Everyone was hit irregardless, a few fatally.

Duo was among the first to get back to his feet, thermal scythe in hand and a maniacal look on his face. He was used to pointless explosions like that. The surviving shinobi looked angrier than was safe for their blood pressures. Kakashi hissed for Sasuke to guard Sakura and tried to fend off as many ninja as he could to at least attempt to keep them away from Duo, who had quite successfully managed to garner and maintain the attention of every ninja there.

As predicted, Itachi was at the head of the remaining group. The only thing keeping Sasuke from flying off the handle and wringing his neck was the necessity of protecting Sakura, who once again was in his way. He made a mental note that if Itachi didn't kill Duo, he would.

Meanwhile, Duo had turned on his thermal scythe and charged, laughing like a lunatic. An enormous number of shuriken and kunai made their way towards him, bouncing off with fizzling sparks. A kick towards Duo's stomach only ended with the responsible shinobi getting knocked off his feet with all of his hair standing on end. Duo was thrown back a few feet, but managed to keep his footing. His field stopped the impact, but the momentum carried through enough to affect his balance. He moved back a bit to reorient himself.

Duo was on his own, facing more than a dozen ninja plus Itachi. Sasuke was facing two and trying to cover for Sakura. Half a dozen were focused on just keeping Kakashi out of the way. Duo was more than content with the situation, taking pot shots at anyone who came too close and continuously taunting everyone else.

"Scared of my scythe?" Duo teased, swinging at one ninja that had come too close. He cut the man in half at the waist. "Come on! Touch the scythe! I dare you! Better yet, break this too! See what happens!"

Earth rose up, closing around Duo's legs up to his knees, promptly solidifying into stone. Duo didn't bother fighting his confines, but he did look extremely annoyed. He pulled a grenade out of his pocket and flung it at the guy he thought was responsible. He flopped backwards at the knees to lie on the ground, covering his head once again.

"FIRE IN THE HOLE!"

"Oh fuck," someone muttered.

Unable to properly hunker, Duo was hit by a lot of shrapnel, though his defensive field held up very well and saved him from a great deal of damage. Wary of the last time Duo had roared that, the attacking shinobi scattered. Except for Itachi.

The S-class criminal charged Duo, kicking the thermal scythe out of his hands while he performed rapid hand seals. He pulled the stolen scroll from his robes and slapped it across Duo's stomach, punching his hands down atop the strange text. The field shimmered and sizzled under the chakra assault and Itachi's hands broke through, burning them badly. Skin burned away and blisters plastered his visible skin, but the man refused to abandon his seal.

"This scroll should work better than the last one," Itachi growled to himself.

Two things broke. The seal on Duo's abdomen and his defensive field. Both turned out to be very bad things.

The shield that had until then protected Duo shot outwards, incinerating everything within a five-foot radius. Itachi made it out of the way, clothes singed, and in places downright missing. In the center of the crackling sphere, Duo was safe from the shinobi, but not from Kyuubi.

Sensing an opportunity to escape, Kyuubi abandoned all sense of honor and rammed the gates. Duo turned into his mind and shoved back, just as ornery as he had boasted. He wrapped one arm through the bars and held the gate in place while the fox roared. Kyuubi sank his teeth into the boy's arm and Duo retaliated by punching him in the eye. Quite literally since the fox's eye was larger than his hand.

"Duo!" Kakashi yelled, sounding almost desperate to get his attention. "Turn off your weapon!"

Duo slowly cracked his eyes open, not needing the distraction. He snapped to full attention, putting Kyuubi on a sidetrack. The fox roared louder at the snub, shoving forward. Cursing to put a sailor to shame, Duo diverted enough of his attention to slap the gate shut again, his vulgarity so profound that Kyuubi was stunned to stillness for an instant. Flicking him the bird, Duo once again turned his attention to the surrounding world.

The world inside of the field was darker than the surrounding area. Around it, Duo could see Itachi waiting to do something else to him, but he could also see shadows of other things, things that shouldn't even exist there. He saw a phantom of a modern car go by. The problem, besides the obvious, was that no one else could see any of it.

Pain shot through the blond when he tried to reach for the source of the field, discovering three problems with his arm. The first was that it wasn't obeying his order to move very well, which could probably be explained by the second problem, namely the presence of claws tipping his fingers. The final abnormality was that he could see right through his arm like it was nothing but a cheap hologram.

_Can it for now!_ Duo yelled at the demon fox. _I need to fix this!_

_Fuck you! I'm free!_

_I've got him,_ a calm voice said, startling them both.

_Shinigami?_ Duo exclaimed. _How the hell did you get here?_

_I could hear you yelling, so I came to help. I have Kyuubi. I'll lock him back up._

_Damn you both!_ Kyuubi roared.

Duo saw the claws receding as he regained control of his arm. He stuffed both hands into his mangled jacket, both turning off the malfunctioning shield and drawing his final gun. The moment the darkened sphere vanished, he unloaded his revolver at Itachi, desperately trying to figure out how to fight with both legs encased in stone.

Itachi had managed to avoid being hit, and had even returned fire, striking Duo in the shoulder with a kunai. He still seemed to be trying to avoid killing the teenager, but at the same time he was angry enough to land a deliberate blow.

_I normally wouldn't offer, but would you like me to kick their asses?_ Shinigami asked solemnly.

_Nuke 'em,_ Duo snarled, completely giving up control of his body.

Shinigami casually plucked the kunai from his shoulder and stood up, stone falling away from his legs like it was water. With a flick of his fingers, he put protective bubbles around the members of Team Seven, one of which Sasuke bounced off of trying to dodge a fireball. The flames died out harmlessly, the risk of a reoccurring attack vanishing when he planted his newly acquired kunai in the responsible ninja's temple without ever even looking in his direction. The man dropped like a rock. Needless to say, Shinigami immediately had the attention of every shinobi there, including his companions. He turned to fully face Itachi, amused when he saw the genuine fear in the man's eyes. He could see his own jet-black eyes reflected in the ninja's red ones.

Shinigami smiled placidly, still walking around calmly, occasionally towards a shinobi, who backed away from him unanimously without hesitation. His eyes seemed to deeply bother the ninja, and they only seemed to hold their ground in the slightest because Itachi was. No whites, no irises, just black, and there was no single person there that wasn't disturbed by them. He started speaking when he was certain that every man, and the one cross-dressing woman, there had seen them.

"They say that the eyes are the windows to the soul," Shinigami mused in a voice much deeper than the one they had heard only moments ago. One shinobi lost his nerve and attacked out of panic. He casually dodged the lightening strike and prodded the responsible man in the shoulder. The ninja staggered, visibly desiccating, his body turning hollow as it wasted away to nothing and fell useless to the ground, a skeletal wreck. "You should be more careful of what souls you summon," he continued casually.

"I summoned Kyuubi," Itachi said cockily, a vague waver in his voice belying his fear.

"I am not some weakling demon fox," Shinigami said scathingly, ignoring Kyuubi's outraged, and rather vulgar, comment. Someone in the few remaining shinobi tried to run. Shinigami calmly breathed gently in his direction, causing the man to fall into ashes. After that, no one dared to even blink.

"Who are you?" Itachi asked slowly, his mask of indifference quickly slipping away, replaced by abject fear. Sasuke was stupefied. Never before in his life could he even have imagined such a look on his brother's face.

"A God," he said smoothly, stepping forward. Itachi stepped back. "I am Shinigami. I… am… DEATH!" he roared, unfurling massive dragon-like wings behind him for effect, completely destroying what remained of Naruto's poor jacket.

_Oh sure, ham it up, why don't you?_ Duo teased.

_Why not? This is fun!_

True to his teasing, that was all it took. Danger of disintegrating or not, the shinobi scattered in every direction known to man and a few others besides. Shinigami gracefully reached into the front of the destroyed orange jacket he wore, pulling out one of Duo's special darts and planting the shot directly into Itachi's retreating butt. The moment they were gone, Shinigami burst into hysterical laugher, dropping the protective bubbles he had been holding around the members of Team Seven.

Kakashi was at a loss. If he took his students and ran, he had absolutely no doubt that they would be instantly caught. The God, assuming he really was one, was completely insane from what he could see. He had no choice but to stick it out and hope that Shinigami didn't harm them. The God of Death noticed his discomfort and attempted to explain, still laughing.

"He wet himself!" Shinigami cackled.

_The dart! Tell them about the dart you used!_ Duo squealed, pausing from his fun in mooning Kyuubi.

"Oh! And, Sasuke," he called, causing the boy to go rigid. "You should thank me. Because of that dart I shot your brother with, he'll be questioning his sexuality for years."

At that point, Sasuke was almost obligated to ask. "Why?"

"It's a little something from Duo's world that's called the 'weekender'," Shinigami grinned. "Guaranteed to keep Itachi busy for thirty-six hours."

"Did you knock him out too?" Kakashi asked, glancing at Sakura's slumbering form.

"For starters, Duo did that, not me," Shinigami said wryly. "And 'busy' does not constitute sleeping."

"So instead of sedating him, you got him jacked up?" Sasuke asked angrily, getting over his fear of the winged God since the black-eyed blond seemed so docile.

"More liked jacked off," he corrected, starting to snicker again.

"Would you be serious?" Sasuke snapped.

"I am! That stuff will have him hornier than a room of teenaged boys watching the porn channel in stereo."

"Why the hell would Duo carry something like that?"

Kakashi sighed, visibly dumbfounded. The infamous God of Death, clearly the most powerful entity he had ever even heard of, was acting just as obnoxious as Duo and Naruto. Combined. Even worse, he was now engaged in a childish argument with Sasuke, who of all people should know better.

"Duo was going to shoot you with it," Shinigami supplied gleefully.

_You weren't supposed to tell him that! Now he'll be on the alert and dodge the spare!_ Duo protested.

"Why the hell would he do that?" Sasuke demanded.

"Shits and grins."

"I'm going to kick his ass," Sasuke growled, completely serious.

"I think he'd prefer that you pound it," Shinigami responded with a wink. Sasuke had an instant nosebleed.

Kakashi was torn between snickering at Sasuke's discomfort, blushing at the images the comment brought to mind, and being stupefied that the God of Death was an absolute pervert. Aside from sheer perversion, he was just downright evil to have done what he did to Itachi. He had scared the man so badly that he actually messed himself, then deliberately made him think that fear turned him on. Now, the winged god was hitting on Sasuke and had even backed him up against a tree with a lecherous look while the boy was sputtering for a response to the 'pounding' comment. Kakashi was suddenly glad that Sakura wasn't awake to see this.

"That's enough," Kakashi intervened, seeing that Shinigami was actually leaning in for a kiss. Seeing the distraction, Sasuke shoved him back and scrambled away.

"Stay away from me!" Sasuke said in a rather high-pitched tone, completely flustered. "I'm not gay!"

Rather than get upset, Shinigami actually chuckled. "When you get as old as I am, you take it where you can get it," he shrugged. Kakashi's interest piqued.

"How old are you?"

"That's like asking me how many sexual positions I know," he evaded, at the same time putting Kakashi on the defensive. "I can show you if you'd like." Leering, he took a step towards the spooked jounin.

The graceful creature that was death suddenly staggered, his wings vanishing in a cloud of shadows. Obsidian eyes flickered back to blue.

"Alright, you've had your fun," the blond grumbled to himself, looking a bit miffed.

_Sure. Make me do all the work and then won't even let me play a little._

"Duo?" Kakashi asked cautiously.

"Yeah, it's me," Duo confirmed. "I guess I should apologize for letting the Mistress of the Night tease you for so long."

_Keep in mind that I take on the gender of my host,_ Shinigami commented casually.

_Go moon the fox,_ Duo retorted.

_I've seen enough asses today,_ Kyuubi griped. The entire time Shinigami had been in charge, Duo had been standing just beyond the bars of his cage, butt fully exposed and wagging.

Fingers were snapped in front of Duo's nose, catching his attention. "Sorry. What was that? I was distracted by the voices in my head," Duo said honestly, playfully making fun of himself.

"I asked you if you could control him in the future," Kakashi sighed. He noticed he seemed to be doing a lot of that recently.

"Why not?" Duo smirked. "Say, since the scroll we were sent to retrieve went up in smoke when Itachi attacked me, can we go back to Kohana now?"

"Sure," Kakashi agreed. "You carry Sakura since you doped her out of her skull." He expected an argument and was surprised when Duo nodded placidly and slung the pink-haired shinobi over his shoulder. He raised an eyebrow.

"What? Most of my weapons are broken anyways," Duo said by way of explanation.

"Dobe," Sasuke muttered, starting down the mostly demolished road.

"I prefer 'baka' personally," Duo said cheerfully.

Once again, Kakashi sighed.

------------------------------

Naruto was viciously slapped awake. The first thing he saw was Heero's angry face. He glanced around, noting that he was sprawled across the back seat of a car, Heero sitting his stomach as he beat the crap out of him to wake him up. The car was, as far as he could tell, out in the middle of nowhere in the dead of night.

"I'm awake already!" Naruto snapped, shoving Heero off of him. "What is so important that it can't wait until morning?"

"We have people tracking us. This car has been identified and we have to leave it behind. For now we'll have to proceed on foot and I'm not carrying you," Heero hissed. "What's wrong with you anyways?"

Naruto cut off a sharp response to actually consider the question. He wondered as well why he had passed out in pain. It had felt like his life was being drained away, sapping all of his energy so severely that he had been forced to struggle to breathe. His strength was still gone and he felt emaciated, so he automatically tried to fall back on Shinigami's power, only to come to a horrifying revelation. Shinigami was gone.

"Oh shit," Naruto muttered to himself, momentarily forgetting that Heero was with him.

"What?" the Gundam pilot pressed heatedly. He wanted answers and he wanted them hours ago.

"Shinigami is gone," Naruto managed weakly, crawling out of the car to stand in the tall grass. He felt so weak that he automatically leaned against a tree for support. Heero followed him out, standing a few feet away with his arms crossed against his chest.

"Who?" Heero snapped.

"Shinigami! The God of Death! I've been drawing on him for power because Duo is a weakling and now he's gone! I can't find him!" Naruto wailed.

God of Death? Heero didn't readily understand, but continued with his questions, trying to find out as much from the strange teenager as he could. "And what does that mean?"

"Are you an idiot?" Naruto snapped. "It means I'm helpless! I have no access to chakra at all. I know nothing of your fighting styles and can't use my own."

"So where is… Shinigami?" Heero asked tentatively, not entirely willing to believe that his comrade had been an avatar for something so deadly. Surely he would have said something or shown some signs of the God.

"If I knew, I'd have already called on him," Naruto said slowly, as if speaking to a brain-damaged individual. He had met several in his life. A kunai to the skull generally did little for mental clarity.

"So what do we do?" he asked heatedly.

"Well, unless you can pull a gun out of your ass, I suggest we surrender," the ninja offered, slowly raising both of his arms in example. Heero spun around on his toes, finding fourteen armed Oz soldiers holding rifles pointed in their direction.

"And when did they arrive?" Heero hissed under his breath, beyond livid.

"I have no idea. I just saw them a second ago," Naruto whispered back.

Heero thought rapidly, though he raised his arms to admit defeat as well. He glanced at the braided boy and prayed that he wouldn't blow their cover. "No matter what happens, say nothing," he instructed in a low voice, soft enough that the Oz soldiers didn't hear him, careful not to move his lips. Naruto inclined his head a fraction to indicate that he had heard and planned to obey.

"Base, we have two civilians who we suspect to be Gundam pilots," one man said into a small phone. There was a slight pause before he continued. "They have both surrendered." Another pause followed. "Roger." He removed the phone from his ear and slipped it into some unseen pocket. "You are both to surrender and return to the nearest base for questioning."

Both teenagers nodded silently, neither fighting back as they were approached and cuffed roughly. Their eyes met briefly, at which point Naruto gave the barest of nods, a promise that he wouldn't speak at all. Powerless or not, he was a ninja, and he had been trained to hold his tongue during interrogations. Neither resisted as they were escorted back onto the road and shoved into separate black vans, guns held to their heads at all points in time.

------------------------------

The two teenagers had been led to separate locations upon arriving at the base. Naruto had wanted to stay close to Heero, but had no choice, being powerless as he was. After being thrown in a sterile white room, the ninja promptly swiveled his arms to get his hands back in front of him, the act earning him access to much cursing and four guns pointed in his direction. Naruto just scrunched his eyes shut with a massive grin. He was kicked in the gut for his efforts, his arms unable to do much to protect him while bound.

"Who are you?" a guard asked. Naruto hesitated. If he gave out information about who he really was, it may or may not be detrimental to the four pilots he had started to consider friends. He stalled, deliberately pretending to try to catch his breath from the blow, even though it hadn't been that rough. For him anyways, since he had taken much worse just training. Eventually, he decided to just do as Heero had said and remain silent.

Accepting the fact that he was about to be punished for his defiance, Naruto sighed dejectedly and kept his lips sealed. He kept his eyes open, wanting to know how badly he was about to be injured. If he could see a blow coming, he could prevent himself from crying out in shock. As long as he could remain indifferent, he held the upper hand in the interrogation. Seeing a chair in the room, he casually walked over to it and plopped down, certain that it would annoy his captors.

Surprisingly, he wasn't hit again. Guns were still held in his direction, but no one did or said anything. After a few minutes, two men walked into the room, both of which he recognized, one from imitating and the other from the numerous reports stuffed under his nose while he was trying to sleep. Treize and Zechs.

"What are you doing and how?" Zechs asked, more impatient than the brunette beside him. Rather than answer, Naruto briefly sucked on one cheek and fired off a spitball at the blond, pegging him in the middle of the head. Technically, spitting was not speaking, but it was still fun. Almost automatically, a gun was leveled at his head from one of the touchier guards, but Treize put him off by pushing down the barrel. It was an idle threat to intimidate him and they all knew it. The ranking officers had no intention of shooting him just yet. Still, Naruto automatically pushed for power he didn't have, calling out desperately.

_Shinigami! Are you there? Kyuubi? Love of all things good, one of you has to be there…_

There was no response. Before either of his captors could attempt to question him again, he performed a quick series of hand seals, deliberately slicing open the side of his hand on the handcuffs.

"Kuchiyose no Jutsu!" he screamed, putting what little strength he had into the technique. He was amazed when a blue and yellow frog actually appeared, smaller than his clenched fist, but a frog nonetheless. He didn't hesitate before yelling orders to it, afraid it could vanish at any moment. "Go find help! I don't care who. Tell them where I am!"

"It is him," the guard from before growled.

In a tiny blast of smoke, the toad vanished. With a muffled curse, the guard shoved past his two commanding officers and leveled the barrel of his pistol at Naruto's forehead. The man had tears in his the corners of his eyes, confirming the teenager's belief that one of his attacks had caused the man to lose a member of his family. The noisy ninja barely had the time to close his eyes and clench his teeth before a click resounded against his skull, followed by a deafening explosion. Everything went dark.

------------------------------

The kickback was instantaneous. Duo's entire body went rigid, convulsed briefly and pitched over. He'd managed to bite his tongue hard enough that blood was dribbling past his lips as he writhed on the ground. Without the presence of Kyuubi and Shinigami, he'd have already been dead, but the demon and the God refused to allow his body to die. Duo could vaguely sense movement around him, Kakashi moving Sakura away from his seizing body and Sasuke trying to hold him down. A part of him tried to tell the obsidian-haired teen to back off, that it was dangerous to hold down a seizing person for both parties involved, but he was unable to form anything resembling a coherent word.

_What is this?_ Duo demanded of his two passengers.

_Your body is dying,_ Shinigami reported instantly.

_WHAT?!?_

_Naruto was just killed in your body,_ Shinigami said. _He was shot in the head._

_The both of you are too linked,_ Kyuubi added in, behaving for a change. _His soul and your body are both about to go away. When that happens, your soul and his body are going to die as well._

Kakashi and Sasuke were both yelling at him, but Duo ignored both of them, concentrating on the two powerful entities he hoped had a chance of saving them.

_So what do I do?_ Duo asked desperately, still struggling to breathe.

_Do whatever you were doing earlier that allowed me to come here,_ Shinigami said, not entirely sure what the teen had been doing in the first place. _I will go back and help him._

Duo thought frantically, coughing more blood from his mangled tongue as he desperately tried to figure out what he had done. The only things he could come up with were the seal Itachi had placed on him and the device he had wired into Naruto's jacket. Lacking a seal and not even knowing how to use one, he decided on the fluorescent jacket. Using what little strength he had left, he flopped his convulsing arms to his chest and went for the controls, barely having the coordination to flip the device on.

Sasuke was flung back by the sudden field. Duo barely saw him land badly before the whole world went dark and every shred of energy in his body bled away.

------------------------------

Brief flickers of light spread across Naruto's vision, but he could not see. Strange echoes of sound rippled across his ears, but he could not hear, though he was certain that at least one person was yelling, very loudly at that. He wasn't even sure if he was breathing. Very slowly, he flexed his fingers, trying to understand what had happened. The last bit of information he remembered was his death. Under his command, a finger twitched, the movement insignificant to everyone but him.

_Hold still,_ Shinigami ordered. _I will try to save you. I brought Kyuubi to help._

_I have to deal with both of you?_ Naruto automatically teased. When the information sank in, he almost had an epileptic fit. _Kyuubi? I have no seal here!_

_Oops._

Blood red eyes slid open, taking in the occupants of the room before anyone even realized that the braided corpse had just come back to life. Shinigami made a lunge for control, as did Naruto, but the two ended up getting in each other's way, leaving the fox free to run amok, which he was more than happy to do. Latching onto the new body, he instantly repaired any damage he could find and sprang into action.

The guard who had shot him, who was currently trying to defend his actions to Treize, was his primary target. Without warning, he launched himself at the man, ripping out his carotid with his newly lengthened canines. He grinned malevolently up at Treize and Zechs, more than happy to show off his bloodied fangs. Exchanging a disbelieving look, the two men ran for their lives, yelling for their men to open fire. The other guards unloaded their clips at the blood-soaked teen to no avail, receiving only an unnerving, and entirely inhuman, giggle for their efforts.

_Control him!_ Naruto ordered.

_You control his ass!_ Shinigami responded. _I don't have a seal for him either!_

_Then why did you bring him?_

_Because he's indestructible! You were dead and I needed a sure method to keep you alive!_

Despite the explanation, Naruto was still rather irritated. All he could do was sit back and watch as the fox ran loose through the base, destroying everything in sight. There was no way that he could subdue the demon and Shinigami seemed content to watch rather than involve himself just yet, no matter how loudly Naruto swore at him.

Unable to do much else since Shinigami seemed disinclined to assist, Naruto just watched as Kyuubi ran amok. Guards went down like dominos as the demonic teenager charged unchecked down the halls, doing as much damage as he was capable of doing, just for his own amusement, going through soldiers, doors and walls alike. Since he cared nothing about buildings and very little about Oz soldiers, Naruto didn't struggle much about controlling Kyuubi, allowing the fox to do as he pleased.

After kicking one door in and charging the soldiers therein, Naruto finally jumped in before the demon could kill the final person in the room.

_Not him!_ Naruto screeched, distracting the fox long enough to start to wrestle for control again. He gained enough advantage out of shock that he was able to force himself back into control. By that time, organs and bits of flesh scattered the room and covered the restrained individual. Shinigami finally stepped into the fray and dragged the fox into submission. While the God was fine with Oz being destroyed, he'd rather keep Duo's allies intact for now.

"Heero?" Naruto asked hoarsely, trying to control his throat. "Are you okay?"

"Fine," Heero answered briefly, only slightly bothered by the fact that the braided boy was nothing but a dripping mass of gore. "Get us out," he ordered, trusting that the blood-soaked boy knew enough to save them.

Naruto nodded and easily popped the arm restraints off of the Gundam pilot, casually tossing the metal brackets away. He even hefted the brunette to his feet.

"Where do we go?" Naruto asked. Kyuubi got over the initial assault to his power and shoved against Naruto's will, earning a dual response from the ninja and the God. Between the two, he was forced into submission and thus resumed his litany of rather impressive curses.

Heero ignored the diverse and spontaneous expressions, knowing the cause of the internal struggle in the brunette, or at least he thought he did. "Follow me," he said shortly, taking a guard's gun and heading for the nearest exit. Spouting expletives in as many languages as he could wrestle from Shinigami's mind, Naruto followed.

The Japanese pilot nearly missed a step when he heard 'frog-thumping whore' from his own native language, mystified at where that had come from. He almost made a mental note to ask later before he decided that he really didn't want to know. A phrase involving a hairy ass and the usage of octopi followed and he made a note _never_ to ask. Now he _really_ did not want to know. He cut off his hearing after hearing the words 'navel' and 'packing' side by side. Whatever crack the other boy was smoking was his own business. He wasn't sure if it was Naruto or Shinigami to blame, not knowing about Kyuubi, but he still wanted nothing more to do with the conversation.

Heero was sprinting down the halls at full steam, but Naruto had no problem keeping up with him. With the power of both Shinigami and Kyuubi, Naruto wasn't even jogging. In fact, Naruto was paying close to no attention to Heero, casually flipping the occasional Chidori or Rasengan in random directions. Once, he performed a 'Kage no Bunshin' and sent forty-three copies of himself shooting down the building, hollering like mad and blowing things up as they went. In a few seconds, they managed a few billion dollars worth of damage.

Treize ran into the pair as they tried to escape. He was automatically torn as to what he wanted to do, move out of the way or attempt to hinder them until help arrived. His first instinct was to get as far away from the fleeing pair as was humanly possible, reflexively drawing his treasured sword as he slowly moved away. The braided boy had recovered from a bullet wound to the head almost instantaneously and that was something he really did not want to deal with.

Seeing the blade, Naruto happily took it from the ginger-haired officer and tied it into a knot, much as one would see in a cartoon, and generously handed the once exquisite saber back to Treize. Unable to do much else, the older man accepted the handle and stared remorsefully at the priceless blade destroyed beyond all repair. A little incensed, he drew a gun, which Naruto also took, this time wadding it into a ball of metal before returning the destroyed weapon. The ninja was taking ultimate considerations considering the circumstances, letting the older man off because he had obviously not intended for either of them to be hurt during their capture.

Defenseless, Treize stepped aside, watching helplessly as the two almost casually sauntered off his base to freedom. Deciding it was not worth the damage to his base and his men, he remained out of the way while the two teens ran loose. The last thing he heard from the pair was from the braided brunette.

"The pervert said he can switch us back if we both work and compare notes on energy use," the brunette hissed. Heero nodded, not responding verbally.

In order to prevent further losses, Treize called off the chase and just stared after the pair, one thought niggling at the back of his mind.

_That was not Duo Maxwell._

------------------------------

Duo woke up in full Gundam pilot mode, his automatic response to losing consciousness. Problem: he had no idea where he was. Solution: play dead until he figured it out and then respond as violently or annoyingly as possible depending on what he found.

Turning on all his senses, he took in what he could from the surrounding area without moving or opening his eyes. He was careful to even keep his breathing and heart rate regulated, a helpful trick he had learned from Heero, the Spandex King. The first thing that came to his attention was a firm pressure across his stomach and a swaying sensation coming from movement, telling him that he was being suspended, likely across someone's shoulder and being carried somewhere. The arm wrapped around his thighs confirmed his theory. Much to his irritation, he could feel that most of the items stuffed into various pockets or wired into the disgustingly bright orange jacket had been removed. There were a few he believed were still there, but not many. Idly, he tried to figure out what was left for him to play with, taking note and devising ways to make a nuisance of himself if the situation called for it. He carefully cracked one blue eye, peering through golden eyelashes to find himself staring at the small of someone's back. Not moving his head, he rolled his eye upwards, from his perspective anyways, to see more. And promptly found himself looking at a butt, the natural progression of a body, he allowed, but that didn't change the fact that he was looking at a butt. Unfortunately, said butt was blocking his view of anything helpful to alert him to where he was.

_Shinigami?_ Duo called. _Where am I and whose butt am I staring at?_ There was no response and the pilot grew a little annoyed. _Shinigami? Are you there? Kyuubi? Come on fox, speak up._

The fox! That was it! He had called out to Kyuubi reflexively after spending so much time in this world. The pain of nearly dying had messed up his memories for a little bit and he had temporarily forgotten what had happened. Now he remembered. Naruto had gotten shot, and Shinigami had retreated home to try to save his dumb ass, and from the look of things, had taken Kyuubi with him to help. Wait… that wasn't so good of an idea there. He didn't have a seal on his body.

_Someone's life is about to really suck,_ he mused, thinking of what would happen when the demon got loose. _Probably the guy who shot me, him, whatever. Serves the twerp right. But if I wake up with fur in weird places when I get home, the fox and I are gonna have a little chat._ And Duo's chats were never a good thing.

Back to his current situation, now that he had diffused the ticking time bomb that was his self-preservation mode, he once again eyed the butt, which until then had been vexing him. Grinning evilly, he swung in both hands and grabbed the two cheeks in a death grip. Whoever was carrying him jumped about four feet into the air and dropped him flat on his face. Duo smirked around his squashed nose.

"DOBE!" Sasuke roared. Perfect. Just the man who he had been hoping to irritate. It was hard to get the raven-haired ninja to show any emotion, especially at this magnitude, and it was extremely amusing especially since the pale boy had turned fourteen different shades of red. Duo snickered as he rolled to his feet, incredibly resilient after having Wufei beat him senseless every few days.

"Duo," Kakashi said warningly, trying to sound stern. Inwardly, he was rather amused by the rather well placed attack and was struggling not to let a grin show on his face. The look on Sasuke's face was priceless. Sakura, who hadn't seen the attack like her sensei had, just looked confused.

"Bah," Duo huffed. "You guys are no fun." Before anyone could comment or further berate him, he took a deep breath, grinned like a lunatic and asked the question of doom. "Are we there yet?"

"Actually, we are, now that we no longer had to wait on your slow butt," Kakashi said before Sakura could blow a vein in her forehead. Duo startled a bit at that and looked around, noticing that he indeed recognized the streets around him. He had also garnered a lot of attention from the people on those streets, mostly dark looks and angry comments only half heard as the villagers muttered amongst themselves. The word 'demon' seemed to come up quite frequently.

"Perfect," Duo chimed. "Bye." With that, he attempted to make his escape, but found two main things marring his path. One was Team Seven, namely Kakashi, who clearly intended to either keep an eye on him or take him somewhere specifically, probably the hospital if Duo had to guess. The other problem was the female population of Kohana, who had seen his little foray into Sasuke-land and looked ready to remove his explorative hands and shove them down his throat or into another dark orifice. Much knuckle popping, twitching eyes and generalized psychotic expressions seemed to be going on among them. One thing came to Duo's mind and it wasn't pretty.

_Dear God, Une has an extended family and they all came here._

An entire village of ninja out to beat him senseless for having a bit of fun. Not good. Duo knew quite logically that he would never be able to outrun them and without his toys, they could effortlessly squish him into a grease spot on the main road. Doing his best impression of a deer in the headlights, Duo resorted to his favorite credo.

_I run, I hide, but I never lie._

Since lying wouldn't do him a bit of good and running was already right out, he fell on the final part of his famous adage. Hiding. Yes, that would serve him nicely. It would do no real harm, would royally piss everyone off, and give him ample time to run for his ever-loving life. Backing away from the advancing crowds, he pulled something out of his kunai holder with one hand while pulling his forehead protector over his eyes with the other. He flashed the now hidden mob a mischievous grin.

"Say cheese!" he called happily, tossing what was in his hand. A flash grenade.

Even with his eyes scrunched shut and covered by the forehead protector, the burst of light was excruciating. Normally, the things weren't nearly so bad, but this was Duo who had constructed the device. Everyone within a good half-mile radius would be temporarily blinded by the flash. It was a non-lethal form of combat, but at the same time, it was about as annoying as he could possibly be without harming anyone. Pulling up the forehead protector and squinting past the spots dancing in his vision, Duo made a run for it, unable to hear anything over the screaming, cursing and generalized ruckus that followed his unorthodox form of combat.

Recognizing the chaos he had created as the perfect diversion, Duo decided to move a few streets over and go shopping, Maxwell style. All attention was being focused on the flash grenade he had set off, every ninja in the village going over there to investigate, leaving him utterly unopposed to do whatever he wanted. His first stop left him sauntering out of a clothing store, finally dressed entirely in black again, as was his way, in an attempt not to be spotted instantly. This included a facemask and a loose fitting jacket with a hood that would hide his sunny blond hair. After a few minutes of dipping in and out of stores and stalls, he had managed to acquire a backpack and two duffle bags and was well on his way to filling them up.

Satisfied with his 'purchases' for the moment, Duo started back towards his little hiding place just outside of the village. Twice he passed people he knew, and there weren't many in Kohana, but neither of his temporary teammates so much as batted an eye at him. Reaching his little shack, he found Kakashi waiting for him, his forehead protector shifted to cover his black eye and reveal the red one, probably the only functioning eye of the two. He did not look happy.

"What kind of psychotic fighting styles do they teach in your world?" he yelled. Oh yeah, he was pissed.

"Come on," Duo said, trying to refrain from laughing. The man looked mad enough already without spurring him on. "This isn't standard operating procedure. This is a collection of my toys."

The red eye twitched. "Those aren't even your things."

"They are now," he returned glibly. Careful not to break anything, he set down his three bags and temporarily abandoned them to start firing up his generators. A huge metal framework lit up with various lights and display panels down the sides. Duo nodded to himself and started working with a few dials that the jounin hadn't previously noticed. "Summon a toad. They don't seem to like me."

"I can't," Kakashi stated flatly.

"What good are you?" Duo complained. "Fine. Then find someone who can."

"I can summon a dog," the jounin allowed, deciding to play along. The sooner they figured this out, the sooner the junior kleptomaniac was out of his hair.

"Can Naruto summon dogs too?"

"No…"

"Then you're still useless. Find me a toad person," Duo said.

Sighing like a man condemned, Kakashi went off to do just that, wondering if the gods were out to make his life miserable. He had to explain to Tsunade why half the village was in an uproar and why probably at least forty people had just been robbed. When the Hokage summoned Jiraiya, assuming he was still alive to get to the request, he would then have to drag the perverted old hermit out of the room by force. The dirty old man would have his eyes fixated on the Hokage's gigantic breasts (which in an emergency can be used as a flotation device), drooling all the way out of the building.

And _then_, as if his life didn't suck enough already, he had to suffer the psychological horror of knowing that Jiraiya and Duo would be in the same room, the hermit with his liquor and the psycho with his blow darts of the aphrodisiac. A drunken Duo and an even hornier version of Jiraiya. How could this possibly get any worse?

------------------------------

Naruto was camping out by one of Quatre's pools, doing the one thing that mortified the blond to no end. Toads were everywhere. They were in the pool. They were in the chairs. They were on the diving board. Ranging in size from a basketball to a minivan, they were completely dominating the entire area, puffing in and out of existence as the hyperactive ninja relayed messages back and forth between himself and Jiraiya. So naturally, the blond was no where to be seen, having holed himself up in his room, refusing to come out or even unlock the door to let people in. He just sat rocking in the corner, muttering about toads contaminating his pool and that he was going to have to burn it. The physical improbability of getting his pool to burn didn't seem to cross his mind at all.

Early experimentation had proved that it was impossible for the amphibians to carry anything tactile across from one realm to the other, immediately ruling out one of their plans to have Naruto piggyback home and sort things out there. Unfortunately, it meant that any complicated information that was sent back and forth had to be run through verbally. Toads were not masters of schematics, and neither was Naruto. Trowa was called in and the Master of Bangs went to work trying to understand the rough descriptions that the Wart Farmers were trying to relay. Heero sat off to the side, frowning slightly as he followed the spotty conversations. Without warning, he ripped the notes out of Trowa's hands and started skimming through them almost frantically.

"No!" he snapped vehemently. "Tell him that we will not build this!"

Trowa looked up at him. "What is it?" he asked simply.

"Do you remember Greenland?" Heero asked, sounding almost frantic, which was unnatural for the brunette. "Where it _used_ to be?"

"That was Duo?" Trowa asked, startled. Roughly half of the country was simply gone, vanishing one day in an explosion that set off Richter scales on the other side of the world.

"Yes! And that's what he wants us to build!"

"He says he has it working," a hip-high toad informed him. "That and the… something… field."

"Energy phase conversion field?" Heero supplied, not really wanting an answer.

"That's the one!" the toad said energetically. Both Gundam pilots groaned. Naruto just looked confused.

"What's wrong with the energy… thingy?" the ninja asked.

"What's wrong is that he always blows something up!" Heero snapped.

"But he said he has it working," Naruto said, nodding his head towards the toad that had delivered that bit of information.

"And has he tested it?" Heero asked tersely of the chuunin.

"Yes," the toad answered before the badgered brunette had to. "It works."

"He got it to work," Trowa whispered to himself, disbelieving. Naruto brought in another toad to see if there were more updates for him. This one was about the size of a small horse and colored a bright blue with black stripes.

"Duo said to tell you to build it or else he'd have to do something even he considered drastic," the blue toad reported. Apparently, one of the others who had heard their refusal had been summoned back to the ninja world.

"Like what?" Heero challenged.

"He said something about making the door one-sided."

"Just great," Heero hissed. "It was bad enough when he thought he could build a means of teleportation here with two gates. Now he's going to try to build half of it and go across a dimension as well? Is he insane?"

The blue frog puffed away, returning a moment later under Naruto's summons. "He said yes. Yes he was. Now build it already, or die, Spandex-man," the toad repeated dutifully, even though he had no idea what Spandex was.

"We don't have enough of the schematics without Duo and there's no way he can get the finer details through," Trowa said. He was entirely right. No matter how they tried, there was no way that the toads would understand quantum physics. The thing had even managed to mispronounce 'spandex' and it was just a type of cloth.

"Wufei and I were both there the last time he tried it." He glared death at the stack of crude notes in his hands. "Howard sent him some of the parts pre-constructed. Contact him and G. I'll get Wufei to help me make sense of this." He eyed the toad. "Tell Duo I said one week." The blue toad nodded and vanished in a puff of smoke.

Without another word, Heero walked off to find Wufei and inevitably spend an hour or two arguing with him to convince him to cooperate. There was a deafening "WHAT!" that resounded nicely across the Winner grounds when the idea was presented to the Chinese pilot. Trowa sighed and headed inside to find a computer, leaving Naruto alone at the pool with at least twenty large toads still in attendance. Shrugging at the blatant dismissal, he stripped down to his boxers and went swimming with his toads.

------------------------------

Duo, on the other hand, was more than happy with the situation. He had analyzed the summoning of the toads forwards, sideways and backwards, and could successfully simulate the proper energy generated. The huge metal construct was complete and had only to be adjusted when his comrades finished their side. That left him with entirely too much free time, some of which was spent on playing with his gadgets and the rest hanging out with Jiraiya, who he had discovered was a great guy.

Between the two of them, Kakashi had suffered a nervous breakdown and vanished from public view. It was believed by most of Kohana that he had taken some lengthy mission to stay clear of the pair, but the truth of the matter was that he had taken refuge at Iruka's apartment and was currently hiding in a closet, refusing to come out. The chuunin had been startled to find the silver-haired man with a black eye and a dent in his forehead protector. Little did he know that there was a matching Kakashi-hole in one of the Hokage's office walls, Tsunade not taking the information well.

The pair of psychos the traumatized jounin was avoiding was at that moment barhopping, successful only because the white-haired pervert had transformed the boy to look a lot older. The really scary thing was that they had found a karaoke bar and the two were attempting to outdo each other with dirty songs and it had progressed to a stage that bar patrons were starting to pass out from nosebleeds, which while amusing was ticking off the owner. Jiraiya was currently up.

"Oh, my dick is small and I've only got one ball. And the girls all say it's teeny, but it's still my favorite weenie. Oh, my dick is small and I've only got one ball." At this point, he raised his voice to sound feminine. "Oh, he's got a tiny pole and the top it has no hole. If you wonder where he goes, all the juice comes out his nose. Oh, his dick is short and it's always down a quart." He switched back to a masculine voice. "Oh, her titties sag and she's always on the rag. And her beaver's just so hairy, she'll never lose her cherry. Cause her tits are small and she's got no box at all…"

Laughing drunkenly, Duo shoved him off the stage and took over, looking more than slightly soused. He started singing, amazingly still in key. "Tale as old as time. True as it can be. You're in your room alone and then you pop a bone, unexpectedly. Just a little twitch, small to say the least. Although it isn't planned, you find your favorite hand, wrestling with the beast." Duo was absolutely mutilating the Disney tune, but Jiraiya was laughing so hard that he couldn't bring himself to care. "Her twat's as old as time. Dry as it can be. You can win a bet, the only time it's wet, is when she takes a pee. Smells just like a carp, recently deceased. I should've stayed at home and rabbit-punched my bone, wrestling with the beast."

At that point, the bouncers tried to drag the pair out, failing miserably. Duo, they could easily manhandle, but the perverted hermit was more than a match for them, drunk or not. When the blond was thrown out on his face, resulting in cursing in at least four languages, the white-haired man followed more or less willingly.

"Next bar?" the hermit asked, grinning. This wasn't the first place that had ejected them.

"Nah," Duo replied, an evil look creeping onto his face. Jiraiya leaned forward interestedly. "I have a better idea."

The next morning, every pair of underwear, panties, briefs and boxers in the village of Kohana were gone, removed from homes and stores alike. Beneath the Hokage Monument, a new mountain had been formed.

Mount Skidmark.

------------------------------

Though it was rare for him to be so indecisive, Heero was hesitating, reaching out to flick on the switch to the framework they had dubiously constructed, and then retracting his hand just short of reaching his goal. As promised, he had managed to untangle the garbled information the toads had provided and reconstruct the device in the week he had allotted. The problem was that he remembered Greenland and had no desire to repeat that experience. From across the room, Naruto was alternately watching him and chatting with a summoned toad as large as himself, this one a nice mahogany with navy markings. Deciding that he needed a fresh response, the ninja summoned a new toad, this one a nice psychedelic purple and black, about the size of a large dog or a wolf.

"Turn the thing on, Yuy!" the toad said, mimicking what he had been told.

"Tell Duo that I'm going to kick his ass if this doesn't work," Heero muttered. The toad vanished, popping up again at Naruto's insistence.

"Duo said that if it doesn't work, you'll have no feet to kick with," the toad reported.

"And this makes me want to turn the thing on why?"

At the muttered response, the toad adopted a wicked expression. "He said he could get back no matter what, and if you didn't cooperate, he was going to make your life suck."

"And he hasn't already?"

There was a puff of smoke as the toad popped out and right back in. "He said, 'try me'."

Heero pinched his brow. Duo was good, that much he would admit. But Naruto? Always the one to be as stubborn as possible, he snapped his gun towards the brunette. "And if I choose to shoot your ass?" he asked, completely serious. Naruto started laughing hysterically. He barely managed to get out a few words between his giggles to the teenager holding a gun to him.

"I have full access to a God and a Demon!" Naruto gasped. "What chance do you think you have, mortal? Besides, I was already shot in the head once. If you think your bullet is going to be more effective than the last one, have fun." Heero bristled at the taunt, but remained silent, lowering his gun.

"If I wanted to kill you…"

"You'd have shot me seventeen times and I'd have stood right back up."

"You're that powerful?" Heero asked tentatively.

"Duh."

"Then you turn it on," the Gundam pilot instructed, waving one hand towards the metal rings he wanted nothing to do with. Naruto shrugged and moved in.

"What do I do?" he queried.

"Turn the switch on the right. Keep moving the dial above it until I tell you to stop," Heero said warily. He didn't even like being in the same room as the damn thing, but had no choice if he was going to actually activate it. Only he, Wufei and G knew how to work it. G was God only knew where and Wufei had deliberately taken a mission a few thousand miles from there to avoid the task, leaving Heero to turn the unstable field on.

Not worried in the slightest, mostly because he didn't understand how dangerous the device was, Naruto flipped the switch and started twisting the lowest level of the dials. The metallic frame the pilots had constructed let out a disturbing hum that grew louder as he worked with the settings. He remembered the first part of the string of numbers Duo had sent across, delicately carved into the back of a very irate toad. Of the seven dials stacked one atop another, gradually getting smaller as they progressed, he managed to correctly remember the numbers for the first four. Rather than guess on the other three, he glanced over his shoulder at Heero.

"Four point seven three eight," the brunette instructed, still keeping a clear distance.

"Next," Naruto chirped happily, twirling the dial into place.

"Eighteen point two," Heero continued, watching uneasily as the ninja twiddled with the device that he was scared to acknowledge even existed. Seeing the bouncy nutcase finish with that, he read off the last set. "Eleven point nine three."

The moment Naruto finished, the now thrumming machine flashed a wispy light between the metal columns. On the other side, vague colors and shapes could be made out. Neither youth was sure, but they thought they could make out people. The mystery was solved when an obnoxious voice called out to them.

"Do you shits have it up yet?" Duo yelled in Naruto's voice, calling out the question for what was obviously not the first time. Noticing that Heero looked more or less lobotomized, Naruto answered for them in Duo's voice.

"We have it up! What do we do?" he yelled.

"Get your butts over here!" Duo called right back. "You're Caged Hoe has some seals to put us right!"

A loud cracking noise and another voice sounded after the American pilot's. "That's Hokage, you little bastard! Not 'Caged Hoe'!" Duo could be heard snickering. He knew darn well what the proper word was, but deliberately pronounced it incorrectly to watch the woman twitch. Despite the new bump he had on his head, he liked the woman. She reminded him of an incensed Sally Po. Granted, she was only angry because he had made her so, but he did that to pretty much everyone, so she was not spared the irritation.

Naruto was not really listening to the argument, his eyes glued to the shimmering surface. Very slowly, he reached out with the tip of his finger and stroked the surface, drawing his hand away quickly with a loud gasp. He stared at his finger intensely.

"Did it hurt?" Heero asked, trying as always to make sense of the situation.

"No… no, it just went numb for a second," Naruto muttered, eyes narrowing. He raised his voice to a deafening level. "Did you guys see a finger?"

"We saw… something," Duo responded.

"For a moment, we thought you were humping the door," an unknown voice added.

"Damn it, old man! Be perverted later!" Duo roared at the newest voice.

"If I was experimenting, why would I put _that_ in first?" Naruto squalled, as loud as ever, glaring death at the luminescent pathway despite the fact that no one on the other side would be able to make out his expression.

"You said it only went numb for a second?" Heero interrupted. Blinking, the ninja nodded reflexively to answer the question, not realizing what he had just done. The pilot of Wing Zero grabbed him by the front of his shirt and the waist of his jeans and heaved him physically through the makeshift portal. The boy's startled cry vanished for a moment and then rematerialized elsewhere, the tone a bit off, but recognizable.

"You're ass is mine, bastard!" Naruto screeched.

------------------------------

"So that's what you look like," Jiraiya commented, smirking at the boy screaming at the weird glowing thingy he couldn't identify. "Damn. I thought you were older."

"I told you I was fifteen," Duo said, bored.

"I thought you were just some pedophile having a good time while you were here," the pervert elaborated, earning himself a kick to the shin. "What? I never figured a fifteen-year-old could master… what was it again… quarter physics."

"That's quantum physics, you pervert," Duo groused as he abandoned the white-haired man in favor of greeting his body and its new host. "How goes it?" he asked energetically.

Naruto grinned right back. "Fine, but I want my body back."

"Feeling is mutual, bud," the pilot smirked. "So how do we do this?"

"Baa-san!" Naruto called loudly, clearly not speaking to Duo. "We're both here. So what do we do?"

_Forget them,_ Shinigami said instantly, stunning the ninja to silence. _Go over to Duo, well your body, whatever, and clasp hands with him. I will do the rest._

Tsunade was speaking but Naruto paid her no mind, trusting the God to know what he was doing. He extended his hand to Duo, who seemed to automatically understand even without the instruction of God of Death. The teenagers slapped their right forearms together, grasping the wrist of the other tightly. The world around the pair ended, visible to both worlds but not entirely. A small black bubble formed around the region, making it clearly inaccessible to the outside world but not entirely gone.

Duo and Naruto remained motionless. Beside their bodies stood different forms, barely translucent. To the right of Naruto's body stood a holographic image of Duo, dressed entirely in black with his priest's collar prominent. Beside Duo's body stood images of Naruto, Kyuubi and Shinigami. Naruto was in his traditional orange, the fox standing beside him with all nine tails lashing, and Shinigami standing a little further off dressed in a black cloak, with black eyes and black hair almost to his ankles.

"Holy shit," someone murmured. It sounded suspiciously like Tsunade.

Shinigami blew her a kiss before returning to matters at hand. "Okay. You all know where you go, so go there. And Kyuubi, if I even have to remind you to go back passively to your seal, I _will_ castrate you. And I mean that literally, fox."

After a few impressive threats and curses from the demon fox, Kyuubi actually obeyed, knowing darn well that he was overpowered in this situation. Fighting a human was one thing, messing with the God of Death was entirely another. He had learned his lesson the first time he had gone up against Shinigami.

Duo almost asked how to get back into his body, but was forestalled when Shinigami snagged him by the forearm and chucked his soul towards his body. The poor pilot was still staggering drunkenly on his feet while watching his parasite God treat the other two souls similarly and all but stuff them back into the blond ninja's body. There was very little to see as the four entities came to reside in two bodies, finally in the correct ones. After harassing Naruto and Kyuubi into place, Shinigami had taken up his residence in Duo's mind, watching and observing.

For a moment, Duo and Naruto stood face to face, arms still clasped as they panted, deaf to the questions yelled at them from all angles. They grinned at each other.

"Heero is an ass," the blond stated.

"So is Sasuke," Duo countered. Naruto cocked his head, grinning like a loon.

"Do you have an equivalent to Sakura?" the ninja asked.

"A psycho-chick in pink hunting down the man without emotions?" Duo asked, already looking far too amused. "Her name's Relena."

"Ignoring the raving fans for a moment," Jiraiya interrupted. "What do we do with you?" He nodded his head towards Duo, who was finally in his proper body.

"I could just hop through that portal and go home," Duo began, his expression becoming downright maniacal. "But, I have a proposition for you."

------------------------------

The agreement was simple, in theory at least. The Gundam pilots would ally with Kohana and the ninja would use their skills to destroy Oz. In return, the pilots would locate and eliminate Akatsuki and Orochimaru.

The theory was that Oz could neither defend nor attack when faced with the faster and more destructive ninja techniques, and that the rogue ninja couldn't do squat to defend themselves from an attack in space. Oz would fall first, since the current gateway between the two worlds was only large enough to allow people to pass through. While they fought, larger constructs would be formed to allow the pilots to take their Gundams and other assorted toys through.

Understanding that they were taking on an army, Tsunade had assembled a force to be reckoned with, consisting of every soul in her village ranked chuunin or higher. Learning of the attack, probably because of Naruto speaking to Gaara, half of Sand was trying to join in the effort in the hope that the Gundam pilots really could get the nuisances of the snake and the S-class criminals out of their hair. Mist seemed to have gotten word of the attack and had sent over a large team of jounin as well. Wave and Stone were a bit more cynical of the mission, only a few ninja from each area joining in the effort. Tsunade turned no one away, knowing that they needed every bit of force they could muster to stand a chance. She had even managed to pry Kakashi out of Iruka's closet.

Duo observed the assembling army before him with no small amount of awe. He stood alone at the head of the growing mass, a little intimidated since he was by himself. No amount of pleading, whining, or threats had convinced the other pilots to come with him as he explained the mission parameters to the amassing ninja. They had agreed to come through once with their Gundams, and that was it.

Jiraiya clapped him on the shoulder, joining him at the head of the army. "Take it easy, runt," he whispered. "They're here because they want to help." Nodding a little stiffly, Duo raised a bullhorn to his lips.

"Attention!" he called, astounded when he received absolute attention from the entire mass instantly. "In a two by two formation, we will be headed through a portal I have constructed to my world. Once there, you will be given further instructions. For now, I will give you a few warnings on what you are about to encounter so that if anyone wants to leave, they can." The ninja remained silent and Duo had to wonder about the amount of training they had received to be so disciplined. "There are machines there, metal suits of armor, about fifty feet tall and seven tons apiece. They are called Mobile Suits and Mobile Dolls. My four comrades and I will have similar constructs, but we have marked ours with Kohana's logo, so please don't shoot us down." Silence remained and Duo had to be impressed that they were so attentive, but realized that they were so disciplined because they were going into battle in unknown territory against unknown forces. Their lives were at stake, so of course they would be paying attention. "All of these machines can and will be flying. They have guns and explosives. Anything that glows is a bad thing and should be avoided at all costs." In the front of the assembled group, Kakashi snorted. He had seen up close and personal just how much fun the glowing items were. "What you are up against are civilians with extremely dangerous weapons, nothing more. They cannot move as quickly as you without assistance and they know nothing of any ninja technique or even of the existence of chakra. Once you arrive on my comrade's estates, you will be issued maps and schematics. Further instructions will be given to you there. Anyone not committed to this assault, leave now." The last statement was risky since it could cost him part of his force, but at the same time, he didn't want someone there that would hinder him. To Duo's amazement, no one made a move to leave. Jiraiya just smirked at his startled expression.

"They're willing to do anything to gain the assistance that you claim you can supply," the white-haired man said.

"We lack numbers, you lack technology," Duo hissed back. "Combined, we should be damn near unstoppable."

"And you're certain that you can find and kill who you claim," Jiraiya asked, just loud enough for the first row of ninja to hear and spread word. Duo realized what he was doing instantly and matched his voice level.

"Piece of cake. After we enlarge the gates, we can bring our toys through, find them in a few hours and blow their asses to fish food."

Sure enough, their conversation started to spread through the ninja army like wildfire. The word 'unstoppable' came up a few times, alerting Duo to the fact that at least one of them had unfathomable hearing abilities. He had been whispering when he had mentioned that little tidbit to Jiraiya. Seeing his startled look, the pervert explained.

"I think you managed to gather a sound-nin or two," the older man said. Duo nodded, not really understanding the whole of the matter, but following the hint to an approximately accurate conclusion that Sound-nin were skilled in tracking sound, as their name suggested. He assumed that the other groups could perform similarly according to their names.

A little tense but trying not to show it, Duo walked over to the metal framework that had been moved outside. One by one, he flipped the generators on and checked the settings on his portal. Steeling himself, he turned the device on, watching as the shimmering window appeared within the construct. To test the frequency as well as to reassure the group forming into lines behind him, he thrust one arm through the liquid luminescence. He felt his entire arm go numb for a moment, his fingers slowly regaining feeling. A fist thumped into his, Trowa letting the brunette know that they were ready on their end. Duo gave him a thumb's up signal and retracted his hand.

"You'll go numb for a few seconds, but the feeling will pass," Duo called back to the amazingly quickly formed lines. He stepped to the side and waved his tingling fist at the shimmering portal. "Go!"

The lines obediently moved forward, the first two ninja looking extremely hesitant and one even slowing his steps. The man beside him, obviously a friend, snagged the back of his jacket and dragged him through. On the other side, relieved cheering, laughter, and one amazed utterance of "Holy shit!" could be heard, spurring the remaining ninja to go through as well.

Duo watched the lines vanish into his home world for a few moments before moving over to Sakura. The pink-haired girl looked extremely nervous. He took her hands in his own and smiled gently at her.

"Just keep the generators going," he said softly. "You don't need to worry about the settings. If the machine goes down, just turn off this switch, restart the generators and turn it back on. That's all. Not so hard, right?"

"Right," Sakura echoed nervously. Duo had elected her to stay behind because she seemed too unsettled to fight without being injured and he needed someone somewhat intelligent to monitor the machine. He had spent hours showing her, and a dozen other people, the basics of how it worked and what to do if anything went wrong. Of the group, she had understood the best and was thus being ordered to stay behind.

"It'll be fine," Duo assured her, turning to leave.

"You're younger than I thought," she blurted, blushing.

"I keep hearing that," the brunette chuckled. "I can't help but wonder why."

"Because you sound like me," Jiraiya informed him from behind, startling the poor teenager almost to the point of falling over.

"Oh joy," Duo said sarcastically. "You know that now I have to change the way I speak," he sniped.

"You should be honored to sound like…"

"Find a hole and blow it," Maxwell interrupted. Their pointless taunting had the desired effect when Sakura finally giggled. He might have said or even thought 'mission accomplished' but then would have stood the risk of sounding like Heero. Sounding like Jiraiya and Heero at the same time was somehow mortifying and brain numbing all at once. Combining polar opposites like that was simply not feasible.

"Come on… we have to go," Jiraiya said, noticing that the swift-moving ninja lines had neared their end. Duo pulled back, brows scrunching.

"Polar opposites," he muttered. His eyes suddenly glittered evilly. "That's it! Polar opposites!"

Suddenly feeling like something hand gone very, very wrong, the white-haired man nodded passively. The longhaired teen had obviously just thought of something, most likely extremely destructive, and was very happy about it.

"What's he giggling about?" Tsunade asked quietly.

"I don't know," Jiraiya answered. "And I'm not sure I want to."

------------------------------

It was official. Treize had lost his mind. The ginger-haired man was beating his head against his desk among a litany of curses in various languages. Pausing in his fit, he flipped on his transmitter.

"Report," he croaked.

"We have a hoard of five hundred identical blond teenagers riding truck-sized toads and are throwing little destructive balls of light that are destroying Mobile Dolls," a voice answered.

Sighing, Treize switched the frequency. "Report."

"An old man with waist-length white hair is on a fifty-foot toad, and he is throwing glowing _things_ at us that explode." He decided he didn't want to know and tried another channel.

"Report."

"There's a woman on a seventy foot slug crushing all of our suits and dolls."

"Of course there is," Treize sighed, switching channels again. "Report."

"There is a man running through the base causing things to explode. He has over a dozen dogs with him, all larger than horses! And he has a red eye that causes all of our soldiers to pass out."

"I bet," Treize muttered, trying yet another frequency. "Report."

"We have a young man cocooned in a layer of sand that destroys anything that comes anywhere near him."

Treize didn't even bother to respond, flipping to a new station at random. "Report."

"Some kid is running through the halls, _breathing fire_ at everyone!"

The beleaguered man tried again. "Report," he tried desperately.

"There's some guy on top of a sixty-foot stone construct, God I think it's a golem, and it's flattening all of our troops."

Sighing loudly, Treize tried again. "Report."

"A woman here has a two-hundred-foot snake! It's eating people! And she's throwing explosives at us!"

The young general allowed his head to thud loudly on his desk. "Report." He didn't even know who he was speaking to anymore.

"There's a storm on the second floor! It's hailing inside!"

"Of course it is." He clicked to a new station, not raising his head. "Report."

"There's a lightning storm in the bunker and no one will go in to collect their Mobile Suits." Now Treize did raise his head, just high enough to bounce his skull against his desk a few times.

"Report."

"The armory is full of crickets and no one can get to their guns."

"Crickets?" Treize echoed, raising his head to stare at his radio. "Why would insects be in the way?"

"They're as large as mastiffs."

"Ah." Treize had the solution to that.

Return head to desk. Thump vigorously until the problem goes away.

Slowly, hesitantly, he raised his hand to flip to a new channel, hearing gunfire in the background. "Report."

"Sir! The soldiers are shooting each other!"

"What!"

"Two guys showed up and started pantomiming. They're moving exactly like the attacking soldiers. We know they're to blame, but we can't get to them. We can't even shoot them! A group of people with white eyes are guarding them like hawks."

_White eyes?_ "So shoot the people with white eyes!"

"We tried," the officer said, sounding frustrated. "They just… spin… and the bullets bounce off."

Treize gave up and tried another channel. He was fairly sure that he'd find chaos there as well, but tried anyways. Sure enough, random screaming and disarray could be heard in the background. "Report."

"This guy is covered in bugs! They're everywhere! Anyone who gets more than one or two on them just passes out!" the officer cried, obviously in hysterics and nearly hyperventilating. It seemed that the man had a bit of a problem with insects. Either that, or the man he was facing was just downright creepy. "Oh God! They're crawling out from under his skin!" Creepy was definitely in at that point.

Zechs interrupted any further updates, tearing into the office at roughly mach five, his hair standing on end from an electrical blast, his left side drenched, frost descending down his left arm, and his right side looking entirely scorched. The cuff of his right sleeve was still on fire. He slapped it out a little irately.

"I don't know what you did or who you pissed off," the platinum blond started, out of breath and sounding positively furious. "But you are apologizing, surrendering, whatever it takes to make these people stop!"

"So you surrender?" a new voice asked lazily.

"Yes!" two men automatically snapped, turning to face the man that had been driving them insane for so long.

"Call off your men and I'll call mine off," Duo offered. "Then we'll talk."

Treize snatched up his transmitter. "All units pull back and unconditionally surrender." Out the window, he could see the explosions die out. The blasts he heard from within the base quickly ceased as well. As instructed, the ninja held back once Oz surrendered. "Now what?" the older man asked wearily.

"Now, you speak to Relena and… I don't know, Quatre Winner. I hate politics and I have other things to do," the braided pilot said happily. "I'll collect my men and leave. If you don't do what I said, I'm bringing them right back in."

"Where did you even get these people?" Zechs asked.

"Secrets of the trade," Duo sighed happily.

"And what trade would that be?" Treize asked.

"That… is a secret." And with that, the brunette vanished back into the complex.

"At least there was only one of him," the blond said numbly. Treize nodded in agreement.

------------------------------

"We almost have it!" Howard said excitedly, Duo grinning beside him.

"Do you have the second one? I have to set it up too. Remember, this one has to be collapsible. It has to go through a regulation sized door," the brunette reminded him.

"It's over there," the floral freak answered, his Hawaiian shirt of the day green with purple and yellow flowers. The braided pilot glanced over to where he had pointed, instantly spotting the long metal poles covered in dials. "We'll bring in a few cranes and get them through."

"No need," Duo blew him off. "Naruto!"

"Yeah?" the blond asked, jogging up to the pair.

"See that thing?" The ninja nodded eagerly. "Take it home. And be _careful_ with it. I'll set it up properly once you get it home."

"No problem," the chuunin said happily, running off to do as ordered. Howard was about to tell Duo that there was no feasible way that a single person could carry a one-ton construct, especially if he was supposed to be careful with it. But all things change. Feasibility suddenly became quite possible when the one blond suddenly became fifty and easily lifted the apparatus to take it back to the ninja world. Throwing up his arms in defeat, the man wandered off to work on something a little less insane.

Duo raised his voice to broadcast information to the groups of ninja he had requested to stay behind. "Everyone grab a duffle bag in either hand and go back to your world. Leave them in somewhere nearby the door. Do NOT leave them in the walkway. Do NOT stack them. Do NOT drop them, as some of the bags will explode." Various men and women moved to obey, helping to carry the equipment across to where the brunette would need it. At the word 'explode,' Kakashi's hand hesitated, though he ultimately took two bags and hurried through the door before Duo mentioned something even more deadly in his presence.

"You have a lot of stuff," Jiraiya commented, opting to lazily watch for now rather than to carry his fair load.

"And I'm about to have more," Duo returned easily. He raised his voice to roar across the bay. "Hey! Howard! Did you fix it?"

"I fixed it!" the older man cheered from across the workshop.

"Get it on a big rig! I'm taking it through! Fit Zero and Shen Long as well." Quatre had to attend negotiations with Relena, fun task there (can you feel the sarcasm?) and Trowa was staying behind in case there was trouble.

"I'm on it!"

"Big rig?" Jiraiya interrupted curiously.

"You'll see," Duo chuckled. "Grab some bags. We're going!" Suiting actions to words, the brunette snagged two duffle bags and sauntered across, trying not to show his unease at the temporary numbness that swept across him. Before he could risk dropping his bags, he set them down beside a growing field of the things and stepped aside to allow the older man to follow him. "Oy! Naruto! We have another large object for you!" he hollered at the blond.

"What is it?" the ninja asked, obediently trotting up.

"You have the scaffolding, but now we need the crane. Howard was talented enough to make it narrow enough to get through, but there's no way we can lift this thing."

Naruto grinned, offered a mock salute and leapt right back through the portal, completely confident in its ability to function after having passed through several times. He ran over towards Howard, puzzling over his name for a few seconds before just forgetting the matter entirely and reverting to his normal rude nature.

"Ji-san!" he called loudly. Howard blinked. _Grandpa?_ He wasn't that old! Bald, maybe, weird definitely, but not old!

"Yes?" he asked stiffly, trying to remain civil. He had heard rumors of what ninja could do, and had originally dismissed them all as mindless panic, until he had seen the first of the news reports broadcasted showing a buxom woman dancing the Macarena on the head of a seventy-foot slug.

"Duo said to get the crane," Naruto parroted obediently. Howard just hiked his thumb at the collapsed construct, allowing the runt of a blond to hike over towards it. He watched somewhat interestedly as the one blond turned into over ninety and they hefted the metal machinery with ease, jogging right through the portal door. Howard just watched him leave, suddenly believing all of the rumors and reports.

"Hell. No wonder Oz lost," he muttered.

While carrying the crane through, two of the Naruto clones accidentally brushed the edge of the metal construct and were blasted directly with electricity, vanishing in blasts of smoke. The energy of the jutsu dissipated and reacted badly with the field, creating a backlash of energy that shut down the system entirely, sending a thermal pulse through both doorways and melting them to slag. All of the Naruto clones in the Gundam world exploded in bursts of smoke. The half of the crane still on that side crashed to the ground, as useless as the melted doors.

"Duo!" Howard cried out, running up to the molten metal. One tiny slip and their working doors were destroyed. Even if Duo managed to get the other, larger, door erected, they had no way to create a connection between them. Naruto was back in his world and without his ability to summon toads, the two worlds couldn't communicate.

Duo was gone.

------------------------------

"Well, shit," Duo muttered, looking at the molten metal that used to be a door. "Is the real Naruto here?"

"Yes," one of the many orange figures answered timidly from near the front of the crane section.

"Are there any clones left in my world?"

"No."

"Shit," Duo said again.

"If you can't get those things over here, how do you plan to do what you promised?" an angry-sounding Mist-nin asked. There were a lot of the assembled ninja speaking darkly amongst themselves. The general consensus seemed to be the same. They had wasted their time and risked their lives for nothing.

"If I can't do it the fun way, I'll do it the old fashioned way," Duo said calmly. He'd find a way to get home with only one door later. He was fairly sure he could do it, but it would take time. Right now, he had to make good on his word. He had promised to kill Orochimaru and destroy Akatsuki, and Duo Maxwell did not lie.

"And what would that be?" the man from before asked.

"What do you think?" Duo asked sarcastically. "I'm an assassin." Loud laughter from all around met his comment and he raised one chestnut eyebrow curiously.

"Kid, older and more skilled men than you have tried. We can't even find them, and if we could, you'd still be useless. We've seen how the people of your world fight."

"Consider me extremely elite," the braided pilot said smugly.

"And completely insane," someone from the side muttered. It sounded suspiciously like Kakashi. Duo located the silver-haired jounin nearby and whipped out something and blew a dart at the man, striking him surely in the thigh. "Oh, God damn it! I thought we took all of those away from you!" Not far from him, Sasuke actually chuckled.

"What was that?" the Mist-nin asked, now sounding a little uncertain. While it didn't look dangerous, the tiny dart had certainly pissed off the jounin, who had stalked off.

"That was why you should call me elite," Duo smirked. "It's a little something called 'the weekender' where I come from. For thirty-six hours, Kakashi will be at full mast, so if anyone absolutely must approach him, do so with a blindfold handy."

"How does he know what it is?" someone from the amassed crowd asked.

"Because I shot Itachi with one just like it as he ran away," Duo said proudly. That statement created a nice ruckus.

"You faced Itachi and survived?"

"Itachi ran away from you?"

"Thirty-six hours… damn." Well, someone was a little behind the conversation.

Duo decided to interrupt them before the ninja really got worked up. "Okay. Everybody leave now. The elite psycho has to work," Duo called. "I need to assemble the things in the duffle bags you all so kindly carried across for me."

Grudgingly, the ninja left him to his business. One surprised him and requested a dart of the weekender, claiming that his brother played a dirty trick on him and it was time for revenge. Duo happily handed one over, always eager to create chaos. The ninja then surprised him by shooting it into Duo's leg and transforming back into Kakashi, the man sporting an obvious boner.

"Hey!" Duo cried out. "Oh, thanks a lot! I'm supposed to be working here!"

"I'm sure you'll think of something to work on," the jounin said, disappearing in a blast of smoke.

Revenge was one thing, but that man was dead.

------------------------------

Thirty-six hours came and went, and Duo was ready to get his revenge. It was simple, fast, and extremely evil. The braided madman hooked up a dozen motion detectors in Kakashi's house fitted with blow darts. The absolute genius part was that none of the motion detectors looked like motion detectors. They were simple in appearance, like a door handle or a hairbrush. He was just finishing off the last one when he heard the first go off with a "foop-thud" followed by a mechanical female voice saying "mission accomplished" and an entire litany of curse words from the hit jounin.

Duo could hear the silver-haired man storming through the house looking for him, but wasn't concerned since…

"Foop-thud!"

"Foop-thud!"

"Foop-thud!"

…the man wouldn't be able to walk for a week.

Duo grinned and hopped out a window to make his escape. Mission accomplished.

------------------------------

With Kakashi out of commission, and cursing at a volume that could be heard across half of Kohana, Team Seven was officially on hiatus. The three chuunin went their separate ways, Sasuke training and Sakura hanging out with Ino. Naruto joined up with Duo, talking nonstop and trying to figure out what the pilot was up to. The brunette put up with it good-naturedly, answering what he could and occasionally getting the blond to help him lift something or retrieve something he needed from in town.

"Why did you bring wheels? We have wheels here, you know. They're not even the same size! This one is thinner and bigger around!"

"Those wheels are special. I haven't started on what uses them yet. Help me real quick. I can't lift this engine and use the torque wrench at the same time," Duo said, waiting for the next predictable question.

"What's a torque wench?"

The blond lifted up the engine to where Duo specified in a strange cylinder device that was four feet across and about two high while the pilot hurriedly fastened it into place.

"Well, a torque _wrench_ is the thing I'm using. A torque _wench_ is just a very scary thought on all imaginable levels. If a woman tried to torque that, I'd be most unhappy." He leaned back, wiping one greasy hand across his forehead, leaving behind a black streak. Looking around for something that could interest his friend, he handed the blond a tangled mess of steel. "This is just a metal stand for what I'm working on. It should fold right out."

"Thanks!" Naruto enthused. It wasn't often that Duo actually let him do anything more than move something heavy or fetch something. "Say, what are you working on anyways? You never did say."

"Small satellite. It will hover just over Kohana in space and send information back to me," Duo explained, trying to keep it as simple as possible. As a receiver, he had hijacked Heero's laptop, modified slightly, of course. Once the cobalt-eyed teenager found out it was missing, he was going to be livid. He began work on the transmitters and scanners in the main cone.

"How do you plan to get it down?"

"I don't. It gets to camp out there until the end of time. You won't be able to see it once it's up there. After a few years, the power cells will die and it will just be like a huge floating lump of steel."

"Finished!" Naruto crowed happily. Duo's eyebrows shot up. They were easy to open, but not for people who didn't know what they were doing.

"Okay. Put it out in the middle of that field on a perfectly flat surface. Then set the booster… the fat cylinder we were just working on… on top of it," Duo instructed.

He had originally thought that the ninja would be in the way, but with the blond around, he was actually getting through his tasks twice as fast. He could do the skilled work while his companion performed all the physical labor. He was even slowly working his way up to see how complicated a task the slightly shorter teenager could perform. All of the smaller items and weapons were finished and now he just had to work on the large ones. Once he had that, the most difficult part would come. Seek and destroy.

Duo watched with interest as Naruto almost effortlessly lifted the booster jet and placed it as instructed. He paused in his work to write down a quick note.

_I need all of the information you have on Orochimaru and Akatsuki. I need names, pictures, and last known locations and those currently suspected. List all known traveling companions for each person with any information you know of them as well. Include a map of the continent that marks all known villages._

_Duo_

"Come here. I need you to deliver this note to the Hokage," Duo called when he saw that the chuunin was just finishing his task. The blond nodded and vanished in a puff of smoke with the note. "I hate it when they do that."

He finished with the front cone fairly quickly and moved onto another of his large items, his motorcycle. He had just attached the thinner, taller wheel to the front forks when the blond chuunin returned, the Hokage following him closely. Arching one chestnut eyebrow, Duo waited for an explanation. He had wanted information, not the temperamental blond woman. She had a huge wad of folders under her arm and looked like she wanted to beat him over the head with it.

"The next time you send me a written message," she said in a clipped tone. "Send it in our language! I could barely figure out what you wanted!"

"That was this language!" Duo returned defensively.

"We use kanji, not letters!"

"Oh," Duo muttered, realizing that he really was in the wrong this time. "Sorry." For once, he actually meant the apology. Recognizing his sincerity, Tsunade calmed down greatly. "Hey, Naruto. Put the cone on the booster while I talk to the Hokage." The blond boy eyed the seven-foot metal cone a bit warily, but did as asked.

"This is all we have," Tsunade sighed, handing the grease-covered brunette the files she had brought with her. "As for where they are or were last seen, I can't tell you much. No one has a clue where Akatsuki is based. Orochimaru usually travels alone or with a white-haired young man in glasses named Kabuto. We don't have a good picture of him. Akatsuki is formed mainly of missing-nin. If you can find Itachi and kill him, we believe the organization will fall apart. He travels with a man named Kisame." At this, she offered him a picture taken from one of the folders.

"Yikes. There's a face not even a mother could love," Duo muttered. "So I'm looking for groups of two and possibly one large cluster of missing-nin."

"We know they're there…"

"But they may not be gathered in one place," Duo interrupted. "If Itachi and Kisame wander around like you say, the others may as well." He flipped through the folders, only having a little bit of a hard time following the kanji. "Akatsuki is after the Kyuubi. Well, that's smart."

_They think they can reseal him and use him as a weapon,_ Shinigami said. _And after what I did, they'll probably be after me as well._

_Can they actually seal you?_

_No, but they can piss me off._

_Do you know where they are?_

_No. Not my world, thus not my people to track._

_Damn._

Cutting off his mental conversation, he found Tsunade watching him very carefully and he cocked his head to the side in a disarming movement, the action also letting her know that she had his attention now.

"What were you just doing?" she asked slowly.

"Talking to Shinigami."

Kakashi had mentioned something about the God to her. "So he's yours?"

"I'm his host, if that's what you mean," Duo said cheerfully. "I'm not about to claim to own a God."

_Damn straight you're not._

"Finished!" Naruto cried out loudly, interrupting their conversation. "Even managed to figure out the latches!"

At that, Duo ditched them both and jogged over to the small rocket he had prepared, checking the setting of the booster on the stand and the cone on the booster. He was mildly surprised to find that the blond had actually figured out how to connect the two pieces successfully, and from what he could see, the latches would blow apart properly.

Sure of his own work, and trusting in Naruto's dubious help, Duo moved far back, ushering the Hokage and blond chuunin to follow. He readied the switch in his hand and palmed it, sticking his fingers in his ears.

"This is about to be loud," he said, his voice sounding distorted to himself with his ears plugged.

The two blondes nodded and followed his example. Once he saw them do the same as himself, Duo punched the ignition switch. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, a high-pitched whir started to sound, slowly building to a deafening rumble that shook the ground. Fire blew from the bottom of the rocket as the jet engine finally engaged. The rocket trembled a little before finally lifting off the ground, swiftly gaining speed as it sped towards space and its final orbit above Kohana.

In the middle of a joyous cheer that his toy had actually worked, Duo was abruptly shoved off his feet to come to a rolling stop quite some distance from where he had been standing. He surged to his feet angrily to yell at whoever was responsible for throwing him when he saw that the booster engine was lying in a smoldering heap right where he had been standing and Naruto was a few feet from it, arms still out from his intervention.

"Are you okay?" Tsunade asked, going over the stunned brunette as he stared at the demolished booster where it was imbedded in the earth. He started to answer that he was fine when his, or rather Heero's, computer beeped and he ran to it, typing frantically.

The satellite was up and functioning, already scanning everything it could see for the layout of the land. Duo rummaged quickly through the assembled folders and pulled out the map Tsunade had provided, running it through a small portable scanner he had brought along. After a few key commands, the computer began to integrate the drawn map with the photographic one from space. While that was in progress, he set up a full thermal scan of the region, to be updated as often as possible, and focus on groups of two.

"What is going on?" Tsunade repeated for the fifth time, starting to sound really mad.

"The satellite is in place and the thermal scanner is running," Duo said excitedly, paying no mind to the fact that they didn't understand him. The computer beeped and he ordered it to zoom in. A man with long dark hair was traveling with a younger man with white hair wearing glasses. "Is that them?"

Tsunade's jaw dropped and she was unable to answer for a moment.

"That's them," Naruto said in her place.

"Perfect," Duo said, eyes glittering. He set the computer to track the two. "Now help me hold up my motorcycle so I can fit on the back tire and we're off!"

There was a moment of silence, followed by two questions.

"Motorcycle?" Naruto asked.

"We?" Tsunade asked. Duo gave her a flat look.

"I need someone to cover my butt while I do this. I'm not used to this nonsense."

"But Naruto?"

"Hey! What's wrong with me?" the blond protested.

"There really are better choices," Tsunade began.

"No. I want Naruto. He's the most familiar with how this technology works and he's strong enough to give me the time I need to work," Duo said firmly. Very slowly, the Hokage nodded, glancing at Naruto to see if the little blond she almost considered a baby brother wanted to go along with this mad idea. Seeing the overly eager expression on the boy's face, she conceded.

"Fine," she sighed. "But he gets hurt, it's your ass."

------------------------------

"Remember, Naruto," Duo began, strapping the last of his toys to himself and his motorcycle. "If you can't win with sheer force…"

"Win with sheer obnoxiousness," the blond finished, grinning. He knew that combat method very well. Between the two of them, they had come up with some real whoppers while planning this battle. After hearing the first little bit of what they were plotting, the Hokage had made herself scarce and was taking real consideration of hiding under her desk until they got rid of the brunette.

"Remember the helmet I modified for you," Duo said. "It limits what you can hear, but everything will be at a constant predetermined volume."

"The noise dampeners, the visor, the blinder and the gas mask, right?"

"Perfect. Remember, if you see any traps in our direct pathway, just slap me on the shoulder. And from now on, try to refrain from leaving bruises, okay? I also installed a voice-activated helmet-com, so don't yell. I can hear you. Hold on to me and stand up when I do."

The blond chuunin nodded eagerly. Straightening his jacket, Duo swung up onto his motorcycle, leaving the ninja to hop onto the passenger seat behind him. He had installed a killer muffler on the bike as well as a number of sound absorbers, leaving the machine capable at traveling at a volume no louder than a jogger on gravel. Turning the key, he putted the bike from the field he had commandeered out to the road, glancing at the large number of ninja that had turned out from the village to watch their departure.

"I can walk faster than that," someone muttered to a friend as the pair passed by.

Oh yeah?

Righting his direction on the road and wishing to God that he had listened to Wufei's riding tips on how to perform insane stunts, he opened up the throttle and popped the clutch, going from zero to sixty in under three seconds. He continued to accelerate until he had reached more than a hundred, the dirt becoming a little unfavorable to traction at that point. Behind him, he could see the clustered ninja practically going insane in his mirrors. Naruto beat frantically at the braid that Duo had carelessly forgotten to tuck in, the rope of hair slapping the blond senseless.

"Just tuck it into the back of my jacket," Duo called. There was a long hesitation before he received an answer.

"Don't you have exploding things in your jacket?" Naruto asked hesitantly, still awed by the speakers lining his padded ears.

"None that you'll set off by tucking it in. Lean with me, we're turning."

Hoping that his passenger would remember the fact that a rider kept his body parallel with the frame of the bike, Duo laid them over as the road curved sharply, allowing distance for sideways skidding as he did so. Dirt had so little traction compared to pavement. Naruto just clung desperately to his jacket, leaning as instructed.

The pair passed a team of horses on the road a few seconds later, and the beasts went absolutely insane. Duo would have offered an apology had he not been so focused on keeping the bike and his squirming passenger upright. He just flattened himself further forward to duck under the wind resistance. Naruto stared at his back for a moment before squishing himself against the brunette, trying his best to mimic the insane pilot.

Duo squinted ahead, noting that the road seemed smooth and clear as far as the eye could see. Grinning, he shifted gears again and pulled their speed up to one hundred fifty miles an hour. A bump in the road showed up too late for him to avoid and he stood up. Naruto hastily followed suit, even going so far as to cry out frantically as the bike was suddenly airborne. Duo landed smoothly, but he did not, his feet sliding from the pegs and nearly leaving him to drag behind the motorcycle. He grabbed the first thing that came to hand, which was unfortunately Duo's jacket. This caused the bike to go into a wheelie. Naruto heard cursing in some foreign language as Duo stood back up and threw the entirety of his weight forward, forcing the bike's front tire back down.

_He's going to kill us both at this rate!_ Kyuubi protested rather loudly.

_Do you want to get off right now?_ Naruto asked, glancing warily at the ground whipping by beneath them.

Getting the bike under control, Duo called back. "Sorry about that. You okay?"

"Yeah," Naruto answered unsteadily. "Just don't do that again."

"I didn't mean to do it that time!" Dup protested good-naturedly. He lifted his left hand to fiddle with a control on his helmet, a device not on the blonde's. He had a number of toys about him that the chuunin did not. "Hey! There's a village up ahead!"

"Already?" Naruto squawked. "But that's almost a week's travel from Kohana! We've only been on the road half a day!"

"It's still at least a hundred miles up," Duo called back. "We still have a good three quarters of an hour to go." At the stunned silence, he had to ask, "What?"

Naruto grinned evilly, the expression hidden by the helmet the brunette had insisted that he wear. "How fast can this thing go?"

_Don't you dare encourage him!_

"Don't know," the pilot answered honestly. "Want to find out?"

"Yeah!"

_What did I just tell you?_

Duo just laughed at his enthusiasm and ripped right past two hundred. There were a few more jumps and a couple of bad landings that had Kyuubi cursing a blue streak, but within half an hour, the speeding crack-jobs had made it up to the nearest village. Once on the cobbled streets, Duo slowed down to a more reasonable fifty miles an hour, but still had people lunging out of his way. Over the speakers in their helmets, both of the teenagers could hear numerous renditions of, "What the hell was that?!?"

"It's getting dark," Naruto started worriedly, not liking the small headlight that the braided pilot had flipped on. He received a chuckle, the brunette pulling down a new visor over his face.

"Ah, but I can see in the dark," Duo laughed. "We'll stop in a few hours. In the morning, we should catch up with our targets." Naruto nearly came unglued when the other boy flipped off the one light he had and then proceeded to fiddle with the side of his helmet, unknowingly to him activating his night vision.

Naruto just remained silent, though he didn't trust his friend's ability to see, he was going to keep it to himself. He nearly threw a fit when they found their first bump and entered the air. True to his word though, after a few hours, Duo swung off the road and into the trees, making his way well off the beaten path before slowing to a stop. Naruto had no idea how he was going to get to sleep after that experience.

"How can we see to set up camp?" Naruto asked, shakily climbing down from his seat. Duo just laughed at him, and dragged something off of the side of the bike.

"Pop-up tent," he explained, releasing a small switch that allowed the tent to jump right up. "I'll set up a perimeter. You go to sleep."

"What about keeping watch?" the chuunin asked, squinting in the moonlight to see the opening to the tent. He was still trying to get his racing heartbeat down.

Duo finally took pity on the blond. "What I'm about to set up will alert us to anything near us. I can track heat signatures, remember? If a squirrel even dares to look at us funny, I will know about it." He didn't offer to sedate the ninja, knowing that they might have to move fast. From what he understood, they were tracking some really dangerous people and he didn't want a repeat of the Sakura incident.

Nodding, Naruto entered the tent as he pulled off his helmet, a little shocked at how small the structure was. It became even smaller when Duo followed him in and flopped down right beside him, laptop tucked safely under one arm. The brunette seemed to have arms to spare as he flipped a blanket across the two of them, rather thin, but still better than nothing. Naruto just continued to squirm.

"Hold still," Duo complained.

"But you're draped all over me!"

"Readouts say that it's going to drop below freezing tonight. I have one tent and one blanket with me. It's either me or the cold."

"But you're a guy!"

"And unless you try to make more of it than temperature control, there shouldn't be a problem," the brunette finished up airily.

"But… but… you're _touching_ me!"

"You had no problem with it on the bike."

"I wasn't sleeping then!"

"And unless you sleep in the nude, I see no problem," Duo said, starting to sound amused. He might have to sedate the blond after all. "And since I don't want to risk frostbite on my favorite bits, I'm sleeping in my clothes." He almost laughed aloud at the indignant sputtering the comment earned him. "Good night."

Pulling a face that only Naruto could manage, the blond laid down, wiggling incessantly until the action earned him an elbow to the ribs. Grumbling about indecent behavior and perverts, he finally settled and closed his eyes. This was going to be a long night.

------------------------------

Naruto was rudely awakened when Duo crawled right over him to get out of the small tent. A gust of cold air blew over him and he shivered, missing the other boy's warmth despite his previous night's protests. The blond was not an early riser, but the brunette apparently was.

"Up and moving, Naruto," Duo called. "Tongue and four-eyes are on the move. They must have had an informant. They're coming right for us."

"Oh, that's intelligent," Naruto mumbled. "If they've heard about us, then they should know what you can do."

"Which is probably a bad thing," the pilot said. "If they've heard of me, that means that they've probably studied my fighting style as much as I've studied theirs."

Naruto startled. He hadn't considered that. "So what do we do?"

"We get even more obnoxious," Duo leered.

By the time they had set up their first trap, Naruto was redder than he'd ever been in his life.

------------------------------

Orochimaru approached the motorcycle and tent with a vastly amused look. Kabuto was fighting not to laugh. The tiny tent was rocking, the walls occasionally bowing outwards and low groans and grunts sounding from within.

_I know it's cold, but there has to be a better way to keep warm,_ Kabuto mouthed silently, knowing that the snake-nin could easily read lips. Most sound-nin could. Orochimaru smirked, letting him know he had seen the sarcastic comment.

Slowly and silently, the snake-nin drew his sword, reaching for the flap to the tent. Fingers inches from touching the cloth, a harsh noise came from inside.

Whir. Click.

Orochimaru leapt back, attempting to dodge the unseen trap. Nothing happened. The snake-nin slashed at the side of the tent, no longer attempting a sneak attack. The tent stuck to his blade, gluing itself to his weapon and tearing the structure down to reveal a cassette player and a pendulum. Not immediately recognizing the substance covering the tent cloth as epoxy, he tried to yank the cloth free, promptly losing a layer of skin.

Whir. Click.

Cursing, Orochimaru abandoned his sword, trying to identify the source of the odd noise that seemed to move around without any actual movement. Kabuto already had out a kunai and was waiting for the noise to sound again. The dark-haired ninja looked angry. The moaning from the tape had lured him in close and off guard and the strange sound following had spurred him into a hurried attack that cost him his sword. Now, the weird noise was moving about, but he could see no point to it continuing. He was vexed to have been outsmarted so early in the fight by some snot-nosed brat.

Whir. Click.

Kabuto spun and threw his kunai, hitting nothing.

Whir. Click.

"Where is that coming from?" he hissed.

"Kuchiyose no jutsu!" Orochimaru snapped, summoning his massive snake, Manda. He didn't know what the two teenagers were up to, but he heard some fairly fantastic stories of what at least one of them was capable of. "Manda! Find them!"

Foop. Splat!

A gelatinous glob splattered across Manda's face. It didn't take a genius to understand the purpose of the goop, the entire area suddenly smelling like a butt crack gone awry. The stench could put a rotting skunk to shame. Manda thrashed, hissing in agony, his delicate sense of smell viciously tormented by the stink bomb. Even Kabuto's eyes were watering from the disgusting stench and he was nowhere near the thing.

Whir. Click.

"Where the hell is that?" Orochimaru roared, trying in vain to cover his nose and mouth with part of his shirt to keep out the stink. Like his snakes, he had a sensitive sense of smell and that stuff really reeked.

Whir. Click.

------------------------------

More than a mile away, Duo and Naruto were both fighting not to laugh uproariously at the sight of two S-class criminals so freaked out by children's noisemakers. The pair had covered the area thoroughly with the toys. Their theory was to infuriate the sound-nin by making a bunch of unnecessary noise. People made mistakes when they were angry.

Duo held up a remote and Naruto nodded enthusiastically, crawling halfway over Duo's shoulder to get a better look at his laptop screen. He pressed the button, setting off a series of over a thousand blasting caps. By this time, the two sound-nin had figured out that the teenagers were just making noise and were starting to look annoyed. A loud annoying techno song with a thumping beat started up immediately following the small explosions, almost deafening the two ninja and rendering Manda's sense of touch null and void along with his sense of smell. With a hiss that sounded horribly uncomplimentary, the snake vanished in a huge blast of smoke. It was no wonder either. The horrible reek of the stink bomb had just reached their hiding spot, and even with gas masks, their eyes started to water.

"Take that, twerps," Duo whispered. "You may be stronger, but I have a satellite remote control and motion sensors everywhere. Naruto. Blinder down."

The blond obeyed rapidly even though it might have been fun to watch. He'd heard just how bright the last one had been, and this time Duo had really stepped it up a notch. Getting everything set, he pulled his own helmet blinder into place and punched the enter key, eyes scrunched shut. The burst of light that followed was so bright that the pair could feel exposed skin burning enough to be tender afterwards.

Duo snapped his blinder up with a quiet giggle, expecting to see two S-class criminals staggering around like drunks. What he saw was a foot aimed straight towards his head.

"Shit!"

Using his honed Gundam reflexes, Duo tried to shove them both out of the way, knowing that the blond still had his eyes covered. He mostly succeeded, Naruto only taking a glancing blow to the side of his helmet. Dropping the laptop in the dirt, Duo rolled to his feet, yanking out his thermal scythe as he did so and taking a wild swing at the mostly blind snake-nin. He missed, the glowing blade only slicing open the ninja's shirt. On the follow-through, he was greeted with a loud metal bong.

Still mostly blind and deaf, Kabuto had been caught off guard enough to catch the metal shaft with his head and had landed directly on Naruto, who promptly head-butted the older ninja with enough force to crack his helmet and the white-haired man's skull. The blond troublemaker got back on his feet, leaving the concussed sound-nin in the dirt.

Had the two been more composed, they would have abandoned the attack and tried again later when they were less impaired. Or at the very least, not concussed like Kabuto. Thinking that Duo's weapon was nonfunctional just because it was badly dented and had lost its glowing blade, he continued to attack. Trying to regain at least partial advantage, Orochimaru unleashed his killer intent upon the two, attempting to subdue them through fear. His glare was only partially effective since he was still at least partially blinded from the flash. Naruto responded instantly by tapping into Kyuubi's power. Duo just grinned wickedly.

Bong!

And the snake ninja was on the ground.

"Well!" Duo exclaimed happily. "That was… OOF!"

Looking extremely pissed with blood trickling down one temple was Orochimaru, his foot still extended from the kick that felled the braided pilot. Naruto jumped immediately into the fray, throwing his best attack.

"Rasengan!" he roared, hurling a spinning ball of energy. The bloodied sound-nin managed to spin quickly enough to deflect the hit, pushing the energy away in a destructive pathway that tore through the woods. He raised his hands into a seal and…

Bong!

_I think we've established that that doesn't work,_ Shinigami commented when the dark-haired shinobi staggered to the side, looking angrier than ever.

_You're right,_ Duo commented idly. He pulled a little remote out of his jacket and pushed the button.

Foop. Splat!

"Right in the kisser!" Naruto crowed, then immediately gagged behind his gas mask. He couldn't even imagine what the sound-nin smelled with the goop splattered across his face and up his nose.

Automatically in retaliation, Orochimaru brought one hand up to his face and unleashed a fireball at Duo, who dove into a bouncing roll to dodge. As suddenly as it had started, the flames instantly died out. Almost died out, anyways. The snake-nin was on fire.

"By the way! It's flammable!" Duo called out helpfully. He glanced over at Naruto. "Has he had enough?"

"No, but take him down anyways."

Duo pulled out a dart gun and unloaded a dozen darts into the staggering man, watching him fall with a superior smirk. That dose of tranquilizer was three times what it would take to kill a normal man, but he wasn't taking any chances. For good measure, he shot Kabuto with a couple, even though he doubted that the man would wake up any time soon. Pulling off his riding jacket, he slapped the downed man across the face several times to put out the fire, taking extra care not to be gentle.

He had decided the moment he had chosen Naruto to come with him that he was going to bring the men in alive if at all possible. He had noticed since his arrival that the blond wasn't entirely popular for obvious reasons. If the other teenager brought in two highly wanted killers, maybe he wouldn't be hated so badly.

"Let's tie them to the back fender and get out of here."

------------------------------

Putting out the fire that was Orochimaru turned out to be a mistake. Duo now had stink bomb all over his riding jacket and Naruto had informed him that he wasn't getting back on the bike if he wore that 'nasty-ass' thing. The brunette fully agreed since he didn't want to put it back on either. He ended up wearing the blanket he had packed like a toga to protect him from road debris and wind chill.

Every few hours, Duo would pull over and shoot the two captured sound-nin with more darts. The teenagers were both infinitely amused to find that with his tongue developed into a massive fighting weapon, the snake ninja drooled like nobody's business. They found that they couldn't stop for a rest, not because their tent was dead, but because if they slowed down, the smell of their passengers caught up with them. Duo didn't speed through Kohana like he had the other village, much to the irritation of the residents that were nearly run down in the little town, but once back in Leaf the villagers scattered all the same. Noses were held and shops were closed (with people in them) as the motorcycle and its four occupants passed by. Duo decided that maybe he had gone a little too far with the stink bomb.

Tsunade, rather unwillingly, greeted them in front of the Hokage tower and very nearly passed out from the odor when they came to a full stop in front of her. She almost fainted again when the pair each grabbed a smelly passenger and hefted them to her feet.

"Oh God! Put it back where you got it!" she managed, the stench hitting her all over again when the two criminals landed at her feet. "Were they already dead when you found them?"

"No, and they're both still very much alive," Duo said, his voice sounding a little mechanical through his heavy-duty gas mask. Tsunade jerked a bit at that fact.

Very unwillingly to touch him at all, she kicked Orochimaru in the side, flipping him over enough to view properly. Holding her breath and squinting past watering eyes, the Hokage leaned in to peer closer at the pale face. His tongue was lolling out, eyes open and rolled all the way back in his head, and his burnt face covered in drool and stink bomb, but the man was breathing. How he was breathing, she didn't know, but he was.

"What on earth did you do to him?" she managed around her pinched-shut nose.

Both teenagers laughing hysterically around their helmets, which they refused to take off for fear of losing their gas masks, told her. They took turns, switching off every time one was gasping too hard to relate the story any further. As the tale progressed, some of the braver shinobi braved the stench to hear the cackling pair.

Shaking her head disbelievingly, Tsunade called for some ANBU guards to take the two away and lock them up. They flat out refused. She tried ordering them, she tried bribing them, she tried threatening them with physical violence, she even tried demoting them back to academy status, but they would not do it. That was, until Naruto calmly suggested paint balling the houses of anyone who refused with the goop they had used. A few of the men looked ready to up and move if that happened. Duo had then gleefully added that he'd pop them as well for good measure. They finally capitulated. Apparently, Duo's stink bombs from hell were scarier than the Hokage and two S-class criminals combined.

Kakashi still refused to come out of Iruka's closet.

------------------------------

Duo sat drumming his fingers on a pillow in a hotel room that Tsunade had provided him. He had been ordered under threat of castration to take a bath. Afterwards he had cracked out his (Heero's) laptop and resumed his search for Itachi, beginning with where he had last fought the red-eyed man. He fanned out his search from there, trying to figure out how much distance a ninja could cover before he decided that the elder Uchiha could be anywhere.

As far as he could tell, the twerp had just dropped off the face of the planet.

Either that or someone had already killed and buried him in the cold, cold ground.

Duo went still. Underground. The moron had gone underground! He altered the parameters of his thermal scan to move ten feet at a time through the earth's crust until he located an alternate heat source. Ten… twenty… thirty… Sighing, Duo flopped back on the bed, thinking he was mistaken in his earthworm theory. The laptop beeped. Duo promptly fell off the bed, scrambling up to stare at the screen.

"Houston, we have contact," he breathed.

------------------------------

"Why won't you take me this time?" Naruto pouted.

"Because this time it's more dangerous and I'm not going to be playing with them," Duo muttered half to himself, switching on something that built up to a high-pitched whine.

"Are you bringing him back alive?" Sasuke demanded to know for the umpteenth time.

"For the last time, I will if I can!" Duo snapped. He reached for a delicately padded case with gentle hands. If he had to use that, no one would be coming back. Naruto slammed his hand down on the unchecked weapon, crashing the case into the ground. Duo yelped and ducked into a fetal position, even knowing that no posture could save him if that went off. Seeing the braided madman flinch away, everyone moved away from the padded box.

"Duo Maxwell, what's in there?" Tsunade hissed, her face deathly pale. The brunette breathed something as he stared wide-eyed at his weapon, seemingly disbelieving that it hadn't gone off. "What was that?"

"Nuclear warhead," he repeated, louder.

"And why did you bring it if it was so dangerous?" she all but shrieked.

"Because I was supposed to have a Gundam to fire it from!"

The Hokage pulled back a little. "What exactly is the blast radius of this thing?"

"At least ten miles."

"Then how did you plan to escape?" Naruto asked uncertainly. Duo just let loose an unsteady breath and let his head fall backwards briefly. He closed his eyes.

"Why do you think you're not going?"

There was utter silence as Duo rechecked everything before gently lowering the case into a backpack and strapping it to himself before getting on his bike, trembling fingers pulling his helmet into place. Sky blue eyes narrowed suspiciously, but the blond chuunin remained silent as the trembling brunette turned the key to start up his motorcycle, slowly and gently traversing the streets to leave Kohana for what looked like the last time.

_Like hell is he leaving me behind!_ Naruto thought angrily.

_Are you insane? After what he just said?_

_That motorcycle is the bumpiest thing this side of a paint shaker. He's bluffing. There's nothing in that case._

True to what Naruto thought, Duo was grinning like mad under the cover of his helmet. He had gotten away with it. If Orochimaru had an informant, there was absolutely no doubt that Akatsuki did as well. He had managed to fool the Hokage and the one person who wanted Itachi more than anything, so he should have it made.

And the Oscar goes to…

Someone else. Naruto was following him.

A bit irately, he slowed to a stop, glaring death at the blond from behind his visor. Unfortunately, they'd spent too much time together and the chuunin had detected his lie. Duo was about to beat him upside the head for blowing his cover when the blond spoke again.

"I don't care about the bust rust thing…"

"Blast radius," Duo automatically corrected.

"But I would die to protect Kohana!" For a moment, the braided pilot just stared down at the glittering blue eyes, free to smirk since he at least had a helmet.

"Naruto…" Tsunade said.

"Dobe…"

"I told you that if anything happened to him I would kill you!"

"You wouldn't have to," Duo said morbidly. He swiveled the padded case around to rest against his chest so that Naruto could mount behind him, the blond pulling on his helmet he had brought along in the stubborn insistence that he go too. "Not even Shinigami can save me if this goes off."

_And you were giving me a hard time for hamming it up!_ Shinigami protested, laughing.

_Can I help it if the man scares easily?_ Naturally that was entirely unfitting of the elder Uchiha, but it was fun to taunt him.

Naruto spoke up through the helmet-com. "So really, what's in there?"

"Flash grenade," Duo called back. "Have your blinder ready if I open this thing."

"Like the last one?"

"Nope. Makes the last one look like a nightlight," he chuckled. "Oh, and cover all your skin if I set this off. It will make our little tan from the first one look like nothing."

"Any more stink bombs?"

"Of course. Underground without ventilation? Are you kidding me?"

Duo glanced back to his mirrors, pleased to see that Kohana was happily out of view and his informant probably long gone. He opened the throttle, returning to heart-popping speeds on the dirt road.

_Not this again!_ Kyuubi protested.

"How far are we going this time?" Naruto asked.

"About a five days north."

"Please tell me you got a larger tent!"

"Same size, actually. It has to fit on the bike. But I did get more blankets." He laughed aloud when Naruto just groaned.

------------------------------

Duo had out his stolen laptop and was watching heat signatures move around on it in relationship to their position. He waved Naruto closer to watch as well. Several dozen figures were slowly converging on their location.

"Somebody told them we were headed for their headquarters," Naruto said, glancing around warily despite the fact that the approaching figures were still miles away. Duo smacked him in the back of the head. With a normal person, it would have completely messed up their hair, but with Naruto, it just made the golden locks a bit spikier.

"I already told you they had an informant, you putz!" Duo informed him irately. "I just didn't expect them to respond this quickly or know exactly where we were." He glared at the computer as though it were at fault. "We were supposed to be the hunters, not the prey."

"So we become more obnoxious?" the blond guessed.

"More or less," the braided brunette allowed. He flicked his gaze towards the chuunin. "They obviously know how to block ninja techniques. After watching our one-sided battle with Orochimaru, they may even know how to stop me." He grinned then, showing far too many teeth for it to be a natural smile. "That means that you and I have to develop something new very quickly. Either that, or we have to be complete twerps."

"What did you have in mind?"

"Tell me, Naruto, how far can you mix and match techniques?"

------------------------------

With an impatient wave of his hand, Itachi waved Kisame forward, the taller ninja running towards his targets. He drew his sword as he ran, swinging at the nearer of the two figures with full force, intending to decapitate the brunette. The blond, they would capture and take back to Akatsuki. Both were wearing helmets and he could only tell them apart by the braid of brunette hair trailing down the back of one of the two.

Twang!

The blade bounced off of his target's neck, sending a ringing impact up his sword and through his arms and shoulders. He stepped back, scowling at the still figure.

"It's a fake!" he growled to Itachi. At his pronouncement, several other ninja came out of hiding to peer at the… whatever it was… that had stopped a full sword strike from Kisame, one of the stronger members of Akatsuki. The helmeted figure suddenly spun to face the taller man, muffler in hand.

Bong!

_I thought we decided that didn't work,_ Shinigami commented amusedly.

Kisame looked pissed to have been smacked, with a something that wasn't even a weapon no less. Nevertheless, the crude strike had served its purpose. Duo had just garnered the attention of every ninja in the area. The braided pilot calmly pulled his braid out of his helmet, the intertwined metal bands falling free followed by his actual hair. Using the false braid as a chain whip, the Gundam pilot swung it around over his head twice rapidly to gain momentum and then smacked a slightly disoriented Kisame with it, who finally fell over. Immediately afterwards, the indestructible rope of 'hair' transformed into Naruto and the blond not far from them vanished in a puff of smoke.

"Itai," the blond whined, clutching his head.

Duo snagged him under one elbow and ran towards his bike, leaping onto it in a sure movement. A little more clumsily, Naruto followed suit, climbing on behind the brunette. The longhaired pilot gunned it, making absolutely sure to fling the deer droppings his back tire was parked in onto Itachi as much as possible. The Uchiha paused just long enough to scrape the foul smelling excrement from his face before motioning after the retreating pair, intent on beating the passenger senseless and killing the driver.

The motorcycle pair jumped the bike off the top of a steep hill and vanished down the other side. When Itachi led the attack for the other side, he ended up skidding to a halt and backpedaling as quickly as he could. Before him stood almost a thousand Naruto shadow clones, all of them painted up with black face paint in differing patterns. Some had black outlines around their eyes to look like Gaara. Others had stripes painted down their cheeks, and there were even some that had half of their face painted but not the other half. And each and every one had some sort of vicious looking weapon in hand, most of which the Uchiha didn't even recognize.

At the head of this army was a motorcycle with two passengers. The braided figure leapt nimbly off his bike and walked right up a few paces in front of the army of Naruto clones. Rather than tick off the stunned ninja chasing him, he decided to make them have to change their boxers. He punched his fists out to the sides. Behind him, twinned leathery black wings slowly extended from his back, reaching out, out, until they spanned more than a hundred feet apiece.

Itachi took an unknowing step back, not knowing that those 'wings' were actually two of Naruto's clones having a field day in new transformations, or that the poor pilot was having a devil of a time supporting their combined weight. Most of the other ninja followed his example, not liking the prospect of being outnumbered a hundred to one. Duo spoke into his helmet-com.

"Charge."

A thousand Naruto clones and one heavily burdened Duo charged the Akatsuki ninja, succeeding in getting them to retreat over the hilltop, even if it was only to prepare a better defense.

"Blinders and flame shields!" Duo called, pulling out a remote even before he was done yelling the order to the blond. Naruto was way ahead of him, yanking down his protective eyewear and ducking under a flame retardant blanket. Duo did the same an instant later, punching a button on one of his many remotes as he did so.

A flash of light and a wave of heat swept over the pair, eliminating most of the clones. The two rode out the explosion, waiting for the searing pain to die down. Even past their protective gear, they could feel their flesh burning.

"What the hell was that?" Naruto roared, throwing off his flame retardant blanket.

"I told you! A flash grenade!" Duo answered, dropping his as well only to discover that not only had their flesh burned enough to leave them with dark tans, but their hair had bleached out in select places and melted at the tips. The Gundam pilot eyed his blond speckled braid a bit sullenly, knowing that the melted tips would have to be trimmed off.

"Bullshit!"

"Well… it used to be a nuclear warhead until I rewired it into a flash grenade…"

"That's the second time I've heard 'warhead' used referring to that thing. What is it?"

"A subject for discussion at a later point in time," Duo said, pulling off his helmet. Naruto did the same. "Because I think Itachi is tired of our scare tactics."

Naruto jerked his gaze up to see what the brunette was staring at so intently. He managed to turn his head about the same time as the remaining ninja, who had somehow survived the explosive from hell, reached them. Duo ran for his bike, leaving the blond behind to fight to give him time. Kisame cut him off, still angry about being belted across the skull twice with blunt objects. He started to form hand seals when he saw the brunette's eyes flicker to the side a hair and his lips twitch ever so slightly upwards. Stupidly, he glanced that way to see what the teenager was grinning at.

Crack!

_You just damaged your helmet,_ Shinigami observed.

_Thanks for the useful note,_ Duo snapped. _You want to be of help, do something other than yak at me!_

_And you'll let me this time?_

Kisame kicked the pilot off his feet, still lying dizzily in the dirt from his newest concussion. Getting the wind knocked out of him upon landing flat on his back, Duo viciously retaliated by kicking the older man square in the nuts. The dark-haired man curled into a fetal position around his injured groin, angrily punching the smirking pilot in his family jewels in retaliation. He promptly yelped and yanked back a broken hand. Duo smirked.

"I'm wearing a cup," he said helpfully, right before kicking the man in the temple. Kisame dropped. "And steel-toed boots."

Deliberately stepping on the man on his way past, Duo nearly knocked his bike over in his vigor to shuffle through all of the bags and bundles strapped to the sides. Unhooking a wad of metal bars, he snapped them open into a tripod, setting a rocket launcher on top of it. He leaned his weight against the contraption to steady it.

"Kyuubi!" Duo roared loud enough for Naruto and thus the fox to hear. "Fire in the hole!" That was a phrase the demon should remember and relay to the chuunin but mostly no one else on the field would understand. Duo pulled the trigger. Sure enough, the blond cursed loudly and dove off to the side and covered his head. Itachi remembered that particular war cry and shot out of the way as well, but no other ninja who seemed to recognize the words. The thermal explosive went off perfectly, incinerating everyone that didn't know to duck out of the way of the main blast. The brunette raised one hand in front of his face to protect his skin from the heat, grinning like a maniac that all but two of his remaining opponents were out of the battle, one of which was crippled from crushed testicles.

_Down!_ Shinigami shouted suddenly. Duo obeyed without question, dropping to lie flat on his back. Normally, he would have fallen face down to protect himself, but he was trying to figure out what was going on. He saw Kisame's booted foot fly through the air where his head had been. Maybe he wasn't so crippled after all. Scoffing, Duo rolled into a ball to bring his legs forward and kicked him in the nuts again.

"You'll either have to give up or become a eunuch at this rate!" Duo taunted, making another attempt to be as irritating as possible. Snatching the tripod frame to his rocket launcher, which he doubted he'd get to use again, he slathered industrial strength epoxy down its length and slapped the thing against Kisame's head with two visible results. The first thing he managed was to conk the man upside the skull yet again. The other was to firmly secure a metal frame right across his face. Waggling his fingers goodbye, he ran off to help Naruto.

Naruto was busy fighting a set of fully developed Sharingan, drawing on Kyuubi to fight back and still failing. The two sets of red eyes were so focused on one another that neither man noticed the maniacally grinning Gundam pilot sprinting towards them at full speed. Coming up behind the elder Uchiha, Duo yanked out the top of the back of the man's pants and stuffed his glue gun down the top of his crack, loosing a stream of epoxy. The man visibly twitched as his butt cheeks were sealed together.

"And as of three o'clock, Uchiha is closed for business," Duo cackled, already running for his life. He could feel the Sharingan eyes burning a hole in the back of his head and he couldn't help but grin like a lunatic. Wufei and Heero gave him that look all the time. Granted, they didn't have Sharingan, but they knew the look.

Itachi instantly abandoned Naruto and gave chase out of anger, not catching the hysterically laughing pilot only because his legs were hindered by the state of his ass. Furious, he flung a few kunai at the braided lunatic, red eyes narrowing when the teenager ducked behind a tree defensively, thus vanishing from view. He rounded the tree, ready to tear the braided teenager's spleen out and hand it to him and was promptly blinded by a stream of mace.

_You do know it's not safe to tease this one too much?_

_Why not? You did it,_ Duo countered, dropping his mace and running like hell. Even though he was more or less blinded by the pepper spray, Itachi gave chase with a kunai leading. He flung the blade, the brunette barely managing to duck behind a tree.

_You're not a God, dip-shit,_ Shinigami said mockingly.

_Sure I am!_ Duo countered playfully, yanking a remote control from his pocket. He hovered his thumb across one of the buttons, just waiting for the opportune moment. _I am the God of Scary Wiring._

_You wouldn't dare._

_Want to bet?_

_Put that thing away!_

Duo cackled as Itachi came into view, his near hysterics causing the ninja to falter out of sheer paranoia. With his free hand, he cheerfully waved goodbye. He pushed the button.

"Naruto!" he barked. "Don't move!" He could see the blond freeze in his tracks and nod in assent.

Utilizing a combined fusion-fission reaction, a grid of lasers shot to life, visible only because of the dust thrown up in Duo's last major thermal explosion. Even with the dust assisting, the lines were almost invisible, the telltale sparkles barely stopping Itachi from moving. The red-eyed man was eyeing the glittering light carefully, not entirely sure what to expect at this point but too intelligent to rush blindly forward, especially after he had warned his partner not to move. Kisame, who had looked as though he was going to attempt to get up, tripod stuck to his head or not, stilled at the order as well.

_And you didn't short-circuit it. Amazing,_ Shinigami said sarcastically.

Mentally giving the God of Death the bird, Duo calmly pulled a dart out of his pocket. Recognizing the concept, if not the specific drug, Itachi prepared to dodge. Seeing his effort, Duo laughed aloud.

"Go ahead and try it!" he called, taunting the red-eyed ninja. "Oh fuck. I _dare_ you to try it."

Itachi's eyes narrowed angrily as the Gundam pilot teased him, but at the same time, he went very still, eyeing one of the lasers that he could see shining in the raised dust. Slowly, he twirled the kunai still in his hand and brought it up to one of the vague traces of light. The end of the blade dropped off, molten steel decorating the end of the stubby weapon. Dropping the ruined weapon, the S-class ninja glanced around, trying to determine how many of the little beams permeated the area. He abandoned his search with a dirty look directed at Duo. There were too many of the blasted things to even begin to document, most of which were barely visible in the first place, leading him to suspect that there were even more that he couldn't see. Scowling, he folded his arms and awaited the inevitable dart to sting his skin. It slapped into his shoulder.

"I will get you for this, brat," he promised.

"You can try, ass-master," Duo retorted. That was the last thing the red-eyed ninja heard before he lost consciousness.

------------------------------

Tsunade watched the approaching motorcycle and its four occupants warily. She had already sworn to herself that if this load stunk as bad as the last, she was going to beat the braided teenager within an inch of his miserable life and stuff his braid into regions that defied the laws of nature. Duo, in typical irritating style, sped up towards the blond woman at mach speeds, spinning the bike and skidding to a halt a short distance from her in order to fling his captives off the back fender.

The jolt of their landing seemed to jar Itachi at least partially awake, sullen red eyes flickering across the motorcycle and the pair that had captured him. He made a move to get up, but found that his limbs still didn't move quite properly because of the drug the brunette had shot him with. The wires wrapped securely around his wrists and ankles hindered him rather nicely as well. Even simple jutsu were out of the question since someone had apparently gotten way too happy with his glue gun and supplies of epoxy and all of the fingers on each hand seemed to be stuck together in a huge wad of uselessness. He glared darkly, unable to even speak with the coils of wire wrapped around his head and through his mouth.

"There were others, but I kind of blew them up," Duo said, pulling off his helmet. He grinned at the glare he received from the felled ninja. "By all means, pull at the wiring. There's no way you're going to get it off. If you want to gnaw on what's in your mouth, have fun. I'm not the one that has to pay your dental bills."

"How did you manage this?" Tsunade asked, her tone disbelieving. "No one from your world can fight at all."

"Honey, I have a satellite and a computer," Duo grinned. "Hand to hand combat may be out of my league, but I have technology and I know how to use it. Our fighting styles just do not mesh and I was the first one to take advantage of that. I doubt that a single person alive here has ever had to worry about being followed and attacked from space. Triumph through surprise, you know?"

The Hokage had to give him that one. It was all but impossible to fight someone when you had absolutely no idea what your opponent was capable of. Throw in a glorious lack of time to prepare a defense and you had the perfect offensive weapon. Victory was often based on the element of surprise and Duo had that down perfectly. Add in Naruto to protect his backside while he worked made him nothing short of unstoppable. Just his descriptions of what he had done were going to give her screaming nightmares on the mere notion that he may decide to employ his methods against Kohana.

"What now?" she asked carefully.

"I may need you to supply me with a few things," Duo sighed. "I've done as I've promised and now I need to go home." He looked at his captives briefly. "Do whatever you want with Butt-Ugly and Pink Eye, here. I'm through playing with them. If I have to mess with them again, it's no more Mr. Nice Terrorist."

"And this is nice?!"

"They're still breathing, aren't they?"

Just then, Sasuke shoved past them to enter the throng, his Sharingan blazing. Red eyes widened fractionally. "You caught him?" he asked, sounding disbelieving.

"You said you wanted him," Duo dismissed, waving one hand towards his squirming captive. "Take him, have fun, but remember to bring back enough of him to be identified when you're done."

"If he's lucky," Sasuke growled, advancing on his bound brother. The elder Uchiha's eyes went comically large. Snagging the man by his tied wrists, he vanished in a blast of smoke to do unthinkable things to his older brother to avenge his family.

"So," Duo said cheerfully. "Can you take care of butt-ugly there?"

Tsunade looked down at Kisame, who was currently glaring death at the braided teenager smirking down at him.

"I'd like a debriefing of your… mission," the Hokage said, still privately astounded that the boy could defeat S-class criminals without so much as batting an eye and still get creamed by a genin himself.

"Ask Naruto or something," Duo said, flapping his hand dismissively.

"Do you have somewhere to be?" she asked sarcastically.

"Yes," the brunette drawled. "Unless you want me to take up permanent residence here…" Several ninja twitched openly at the thought. "I need to get back to working on my inter-dimensional gateway so I can go home." He turned around and started walking at that, knowing that no one in their right minds would dare stop him. "Come on, Naruto. I'll show you how this stuff works."

"Then who's going to report!" Tsunade squawked. Her protest was more to keep the blond from learning anything else she didn't want him to know than anything else.

"Just ask Butt-Ugly over there," Duo said, nodding his head back at Kisame as he walked. "I assure you, he saw quite a bit."

The man's face just hardened in resolve not to say a word. Duo noticed this out of the corner of his eye and grinned evilly. "I assure you, if I have to stay, you're still telling her everything, only under my _loving_ supervision." Dark eyes went huge and an already pale face did its best to put white to shame.

"I'll talk," he said quickly, clearly not eager to see what else the nutcase had hidden somewhere within his clothes.

"Good," Duo crooned. Looking up at the Hokage, he altered his speech to a slightly more respectful tone, for him anyways. "I'll be working where I always do. Later, old hag!" With that, he vanished in a blast of smoke, one of the few things Naruto had been able to properly teach him.

------------------------------

Retreating back to his work facilities, Duo went straight back to work, only occasionally having to tell Naruto to back away before he either killed himself or broke something. Several hours of work passed by and the braided pilot just barely managed to keep from scrapping the whole contraption in disgust. He had tried every alteration he could think of, even going so far as to install a phase inverter, the same device responsible for destroying most of Greenland. That was promptly removed once again when an unstable flux created a power surge back to his generators, causing one to explode and blow out a cabin wall with the ensuing blast.

Drumming his fingers on his hip in deep thought, he flipped the polarity and tried again. Several ANBU who had come to investigate the first explosion found themselves being rained upon with little bits of flaming metal. It was at that point that by the demand of four very angry masked men the phase inverter was removed, deconstructed and burned.

Duo was frequently visited by Jiraiya, who wanted to go out drinking again, and by Naruto, who alternated between watching him work, dodging the explosions, and occasionally attempting to teach him a simple jutsu or two. In learning the techniques off and on from the blond, who was about as sharp as a butt cheek, he tried his luck on a few simple techniques, failing spectacularly. There was a brief debate as to whether Naruto simply couldn't teach or if Duo simply had the brains and skills of a click beetle.

On one of his breaks, Duo leaned back, watching idly as Naruto scribbled instructions into the dirt and then tried to show him in person his favorite jutsu.

"Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!" the blond roared, creating a dozen clones of himself. Rolling his eyes, Duo repeated the actions, trying to concentrate his energy (chakra did they call it?) into his hands. He repeated what Naruto had yelled, surprisingly pronouncing it correctly.

A figure appeared and for a second both were hopeful until they got a good look at it. The 'clone' was unconscious and so grossly deformed that it had three legs, two heads, and no arms. It also happened to be completely naked, alerting them to the fact that it did not indeed have three legs, but was merely disproportional in its endowments.

"How in the hell did you manage that?" Naruto asked flatly.

"Either talent or a spectacular lack thereof," Duo deadpanned. "Whichever it is, I'm tempted to take this thing and throw it in the women's bathhouse. Want to come?"

"Do you realize the chaos that will cause?"

"Yup."

"The screaming?"

"Yup."

"Naked women scattering everywhere…"

"Did I hear 'naked women'?" a familiar voice asked.

"Indeed you did," Duo chuckled. "We're throwing that," he nudged the mutant clone with his foot, "into the women's bathhouse."

"The Hokage is going to kill us all."

"And well worth it," Jiraiya sighed in bliss.

"You realize that I'm going to get blamed for this," Naruto griped.

"And?"

"You both suck," Naruto growled at them, rolling his eyes.

"I don't know," Duo grinned. "I have been known to blow on occasion."

"And gargle," Jiraiya added helpfully.

"And slurp."

"STOP!" Naruto roared before they could continue. He did _not_ need to be hearing this. "Perverts." Both of the longhaired troublemakers just laughed at him. "Besides, you should either be training or working on your entry point contraceptive thing."

"Energy phase conversion field," Duo corrected, grinning. Jiraiya was laughing uproariously at the mistake. Seconds after denouncing them as perverts yet again, he made a comment far worse than either of them had uttered, using a few words so vulgar that would make a sailor blush with shame. The old man was preparing to tease him about it further when Duo got a peculiar expression on his face and shoved past the two ninja, running for his non-functioning arch.

"What is it?" Jiraiya asked. Naruto was still pouting. The brunette had snatched up a notepad and was scribbling furiously, already finishing his first page of hastily scrawled formulas before either ninja reached him.

"Entry point," Duo said, not elaborating further as he continued to write frantically.

"I get it already!" Naruto said angrily. "You can quit rubbing it in!"

"No, no!" Duo said distractedly. "I was working my calculations on an existing entry point at home. There won't be one there. It melted, remember? I have to either synthetically create one or convince my systems that it's there. The energy keeps backfiring because it can't find the proper outlet."

"Oh," Naruto said slowly, deciding to drop the argument as long as he wasn't being teased after all.

"As far as the 'contraceptive' part, I don't think that's necessary since we're all guys here," Duo tacked on for good measure. Naruto turned scarlet and smacked him in the back of the head. Jiraiya just laughed uproariously.

"Sounds like you want to skip barhopping tonight and move the party here!" the frog hermit chuckled.

"Love of God! No wonder Kakashi is hiding under Iruka's bed," Naruto groused. Duo pounced on that piece of information.

"He's under someone's bed?" the brunette cackled, looking up sharply from his calculations. "Well, give him my best regards." He hiked his thumb at his mutated clone, having yet to release the jutsu.

"That's your best?" Jiraiya taunted. Duo flipped him the bird and then quickly scribbled down a short list and thrust it out to the older man.

"Here, tell Tsunade that I need these things."

"_More_ generators?" the frog hermit asked in disbelief. "What is that? Fourteen now?"

"Seventeen. Now go get them!"

------------------------------

Five months, four hundred sixty-seven generators and fifty-nine surge protectors later, Duo gingerly entered a new set of calculations into his computer. Shielding himself, Duo tentatively flipped the power switch, fully expecting another ground shaking explosion. Jiraiya had finally managed to teach him how to shield himself with a wall of chakra. It had become necessary after the explosion of generator twenty-two, some of the shrapnel striking the brunette in the forehead with enough force to give him a rather serious concussion. It took him a few seconds, but he managed to create a fairly stable field of black mists. He pushed enter.

Energy arced through the arch, crackling ominously. Duo's eyes immediately flickered to his generators and surge protectors, clearly expecting one or more to explode yet again. Two fizzled in warning, but held together. Shocked that nothing had exploded, yet, he turned back to the glowing metal arch. A slightly swirling milky light filled the archway coupled with pale silver glitters. Very slowly, he allowed his protective chakra shield to fade away and edged towards the glowing field. He had done it! The computer believed that it had somewhere to send him.

Duo cheered loudly, wishing that one of his friends was there to share his joy. He understood why they weren't though. Most sane people weren't awake at four in the morning playing with things that had a tendency to explode. He briefly considered getting someone to share his bubbling exuberance, but he didn't want to leave his now functioning gateway.

Beyond giddy, he got reckless and skipped over to his archway, dancing around behind it to peer at the other side. There was nothing there. Blackness would be something. He had a strange feeling that he was looking directly through time and space. Shivering inadvertently, he moved back around to the front, contemplating the swirling, sparkling milky glittering.

Still keeping most of his wits, he decided to test the glimmering wall without severely debilitating himself. Using the barest tip of his pinky finger, he pressed his fingertip into the light, rapidly withdrawing it. It was still intact! Granted, it tingled a bit oddly, but it was intact. Exuberance overrode his common sense and he quite stupidly stuck his head through…

And found himself facing a green eyeball larger than his head. The massive head drew back enough for Duo to see what he was facing, and he nearly fainted. It was an enormous gold dragon!

_Where's your body?_ a disembodied voice asked, sounding rather shocked. _Are you alive? Are you okay? Do I need to get someone for you?_

Panicking, Duo yanked his head back and snapped the controls right off, turning the glittering field off and getting right away from that _thing_.

That just created a whole new set of problems and difficulties for Duo. He had learned to move through dimensions, but in doing so, he had learned something that would do nothing but cause him trouble. Crap, now he sounded like Shikamaru, but the problem still remained. Just how many worlds were there? This could literally take forever depending on the answer to that question.

Gathering his courage, he readjusted the location of the entry point and tried again, praying that he wasn't about to encounter another monster, despite the fact that the dragon hadn't seemed hostile in the slightest. If anything, the distinctly feminine voice sounded extremely confused and worried. Relieved by that minor reassurance, he tried again.

------------------------------

Duo shrieked and yanked his head back when a three-eyed midget with spiky black hair charged him with a sword, taking a swing at him. Flipping off the gateway, he found himself staring at half of a sword on the floor. Physical attack was the furthest thing from his mind, though. Three eyes? And he had thought that the dragon was weird.

------------------------------

After hearing about the first two incidents, Naruto, Jiraiya and a few other ninja had come to watch, almost in hysterics when the brunette freaked out, violet eyes enormous after each encounter. Glaring at his gleeful witnesses, he growled menacingly.

"Laugh it up, llama lovers," Duo snapped. "I'd like to see you try it."

"Do we look that stupid?" Jiraiya chuckled.

"Yes! You at least."

"Take that back! I am the Great…"

"Master of jerking off in public," Duo finished rather vindictively, causing the older man to flush darkly.

"You little punk," the hermit growled, lunging for the brunette. Duo innocently fiddled with the settings on his gateway and dodged to the side at the last second, shoving the sannin into the glimmering portal. In one point three seconds flat, the white-haired man shot right back out the gate, shrieking at the top of his lungs.

"SHUT THE DOOR! SHUT THE DOOR!"

Already an expert in what could only be classified as weird shit, Duo obeyed, finding that he barely managed to close the gate in time. Half of what could only be a carnivorous dinosaur was lying on the floor, bleeding profusely and snapping and snarling as it finished dying.

Duo snorted. "Still think it's so funny, you old fart?" He fiddled with the controls a bit more and stuffed his head through, drawing back a bit slower. "Another person with three eyes. Chick this time. She looked at me a bit strange, but at least this time she didn't attack me." He clapped his hands enthusiastically. "Who wants to go next?"

"Like hell if you're getting me through there again," Jiraiya muttered sullenly, vindictively kicking the half of the dinosaur corpse.

"I'll try," Tsunade said laughingly, openly mocking the white-haired man. Duo flipped a few numbers and waved her towards the light. After a few seconds, she drew back and looked at him oddly. "Do people in your world fly around and throw glowing streams of light at each other?"

"I'm going to have to go with 'no' on that one," Duo deadpanned, adjusting the settings again. "Any more people with nuts here?"

"I don't possess testicles," Tsunade growled.

"Fine, fine, courage then."

"I'll give it a go," Naruto said, slowly inching towards the glittering arch. He popped his head in, paused a few seconds and then pulled his head back out. "Are there people made partially of metal in your world? There's this weird chick and she's naked…"

Duo and Jiraiya fought for position to see through the gate, the Gundam pilot winning by virtue of kicking the older man square in the nuts. He jammed his head through, pulling back slowly and looking at Naruto.

"I thought you said metal," he said carefully.

"She is! But it looks real. I just moved back because she pointed two of those things at me that go boom and throw projectiles at high speeds."

"Guns," Duo summarized. He had seen her armed as well, ignoring the threat because he had simply, to her, been a floating head with no danger of bothering her. She had given him a dirty look and hit some button, vanishing into thin air. He twirled the dials. "Anyone else?"

"I'll go," Kakashi sighed. He didn't want to, but after coming completely unglued with that shadow copy from hell had been thrown under the bed with him, he needed to redeem his honor. He rammed his head through with more force than necessary, drawing back almost immediately. "There are big metal things," he offered.

"Let me see," Duo said quickly, peeking through expectantly. He drew back with a slightly weird look on his face. "Big metal things are good, but not when they're alive."

"That thing was _alive_?"

"Well, it opened its mouth and roared before going completely berserk. If it roars, it's alive, right?"

"Metal things aren't alive," Sasuke said bluntly.

"Yeah? Well where I come from, ninja don't exist, and I doubt that you believe in space travel or space colonies here!" Duo retorted. The dark-haired boy had to concede the point to the brunette.

"Next?" Tsunade asked sweetly, breaking up the argument before it could really begin.

"Who's up?" Duo called cheerfully.

"Like hell. It's your turn," Sasuke grumped.

"Last I checked, you still haven't tried it," Duo snipped. Growling angrily, the dark-haired boy shoved by him and glared death at the arch, not that it really cared.

"Turn it on." Following the distinct order, Duo found a new set of numbers and more than happily flipped the device back on, relieved that he had managed to goad so many other people into doing this with him. He was tired of getting scared out of his wits.

"It's on!" he proclaimed happily.

Grunting, Sasuke pressed the front half of his face into the glowing gate, lurching backwards with a face full of white crap that defied his ability to pull off easily. Kakashi helped him rip it off, taking a bit of skin with the strange goop.

"What was that?" Duo asked, biting his lower lip to keep from laughing. Naruto was openly snickering.

"Some asshole was crawling up the side of a building!" Sasuke roared, still picking at the white gunk in his hair, losing quite a few clumps doing so. "When he saw me, he just aimed his arm at me and sprayed me with this crap!"

Duo guffawed at his discomfort, entirely grateful that it hadn't been his hair to be slimed, creamed or covered in goop.

------------------------------

"There's a guy in a cape flying through the air," Sasuke reported. "He seems to be wearing his underwear outside of his clothes."

"I'm pretty sure that's not it," Duo responded dryly. "Most people from my world wear their undergarments under their clothes."

"Most?" Kakashi asked curiously.

"Well, it is rather fun to have a pair of panties on your head while going on panty raids."

"Oh," the silver-haired man said. Jiraiya just laughed.

------------------------------

A number of wary looks were directed at the gleaming portal as Duo readjusted the numbers on the many dials. Duo glanced at Naruto and his friends.

"Any volunteers?" he asked drolly.

"I'll go," Tsunade offered. After all, her first encounter was just a vision of flying people and she was totally unconcerned. So far, no one had gotten hurt. Well, except Jiraiya, but that was because Duo had kicked him in the nuts to get to see the naked cyborg.

Waving his arm and mock bowing, he motioned the Hokage towards the gateway that had so far provided them with nothing but trouble. Bravely, she headed towards the glowing arch, but she never had a chance to look through. A flying bundle of blue launched itself through the portal, rolling to a stop and tearing between the woman's legs on all fours, tail whipping around wildly. Following him, the biggest, burliest man they had ever seen followed, fangs bared as he tried to shove Tsunade out of the way to get to his fuzzy blue target. His punching hand encountered an oversized breast.

The blow didn't even faze the Hokage beyond making her gargantuan breasts jiggle, earning her a few nosebleeds. Chocolate eyes turned murderous. Drawing back a fist of her own, she cracked him across the head with her ungodly strength. The huge man went flying out of the shack, through the wall, through a large tree, and coming to a landing against a boulder, cracks issuing in the stone in all directions from the impact.

"Who are you?" she said sternly, rounding on the blue _thing_ that had bounded between her legs earlier as he ran away from the huge man. He might have looked like an elf had he not been covered in short blue fur with a long whip-like tail. Yellow eyes blinked. He said something in another language, clearly confused.

"Wo bin ich?" he said uncertainly. "Wer sind sie?" (Where am I? Who are you?)

"German," Duo muttered. "Crap. I don't know that one. If he doesn't know Japanese, why couldn't he speak something more common like English?"

"Ja!" the blue fuzzy creature said energetically. "I know English." The word was pronounced differently in Japanese, but he apparently caught the gist of it.

Everyone in the room still looked dazed excepting Duo. He swapped over languages, momentarily not caring that no one else understood a word either of them said.

"Not to be rude, but what are you?"

"I'm human, but I'm a mutant. That woman is strong. Is she a mutant too?" he asked, blinking strangely golden eyes at the large-bosomed woman. "Mine name is Kurt."

"Duo," the brunette similarly introduced himself, offering one hand to shake. He was met with a tentative three-fingered grasp, the grip tightening when he didn't pull away. "And, no, she's not a mutant. We don't have them here. She's just strong because she's a ninja." He cocked his head, used to seeing odd things by now, so the blue furry boy didn't bother him really. "Why did you come through my gateway?"

"I pissed off Sabertooth and he came after me to kick mine ass. He caught mine tail and tried to fling me into a wall, but then a glowing thing appeared and here I was. I guess he tried to follow me."

"What did you do to him?" Duo asked, now morbidly curious.

"I rigged his motorcycle seat so that when he turned it on, it would administer an immediate enema. He was not amused. I didn't think he'd be able to catch me, though." Duo cackled. When and if he ever got home, Wufei was in for one hell of a surprise.

"Well, this is a different dimension. I came here by accident and am just trying to get home. You need to take, Sabertooth was it, back home before you end up getting stuck here for good."

"Understood. I'll get him," Kurt beamed, showing off an impressive set of fangs. In a puff of smoke, he was gone, reappearing in another blast of sulfur to leap nimbly through the gate. Sighing, Duo switched back to Japanese and turned off the gate.

"That world has mutants," he summed up. "He pulled a prank, and it was a damn good one, and the other guy tried to rip him to shreds for it. I'm guessing that the mutants have factions, just like you guys." He spun numbers, taking down notes of what they'd already tried in the past. "Okay. Any volunteers? And please, no more holes in the wall of this shed. I don't think it's structurally sound anymore."

------------------------------

Duo popped his head through gingerly, wondering what he would find this time. A diminutive blond with oddly pointed ears growled menacingly at him and dropped a two-foot green-clad man in his hands to aim an arrow at his head. From the swords, quiver, and bow with an arrow pointed at his noggin, he spoke up quickly when he saw a slight pause before firing.

"Just looking for something! Don't mind me!"

"What are you looking for?" the gold-haired, gold-eyed man asked. Duo still swore that he looked like an elf with his tiny stature and pointed ears.

"Just my home. Dimension hopping with no real way to do it accurately," Duo explained. Normally, he would have been long gone, but he was deathly curious. He brought one arm through and pointed. "Is that a leprechaun?" He received a terse nod. "Neat. And are you an elf?" Another nod was given.

He started to pull back when the elf spoke up rather loudly. "You possess strange… instruments. Do you know how to fight a dragon?"

Fight a dragon? But the gold one from earlier had seemed so nice. Things must be different here. "Is it big?"

"Very."

"I'd suggest explosives fired from a long range then."

"Explosives?"

"Things that go 'boom' when you set them off. I'd say napalm, but I guess that a fire-breathing creature wouldn't mind that. Maybe an atomic device…"

"Never mind," the blond cut him off, shaking his shaggy blond hair. "Just go home to where your strange things are."

"Can do!" Duo chirped. "Oh, and thanks for not shooting me!" He pulled back and flipped off the gateway, writing down the numbers of his coordinates. "Nope," he said succinctly, alerting the others that he was still making no progress. "But they have elves and leprechauns there!"

------------------------------

It was Jiraiya's turn again. The white-haired old man obediently leaned forward, sticking his head through the portal. They saw his body stiffen a little, but he didn't pull back, just stayed perfectly still. And he stayed there. And stayed there. They were beginning to think that he was stuck there or hurt until they saw it. The pervert was sporting the biggest boner in existence.

"Well, we found a bathhouse or something involving nudity," Duo muttered.

"PERVERT!" Tsunade roared, yanking him back by the hem of his shirt. She then proceeded to use her Godzilla-like strength to kick him directly in his erection, sending him through the roof and out of sight, howling in agony.

"Tsunade, sweety, when I said no more holes in the walls, I was hoping that you'd refrain from presenting me with skylights," Duo said. He eyed the still open gateway. "Now I'm just curious."

"If you get a hard-on too, you're following his ass out the ceiling," the Hokage warned in a dangerous voice. Duo laughed and flapped one hand dismissively, looking to see what had gotten the pervert all but neutered.

He blinked. Then he blinked again. There were two young women, hopping around on a rather rough landscape, fighting like crazy and too preoccupied to notice him. One was a rather small-breasted, short redhead with one hell of a temper, screaming at the top of her lungs while she chased around the other girl, throwing the occasional fireball or bolt of lightening at her. It was the other girl that made him certain of why the frog hermit had watched for so long.

She was a bit taller and had dark hair. Scantily dressed would be the understatement of the millennium. What had gotten his full attention, though, was the size of her breasts. Each one was bigger than his head! And every time she jumped to a new location, taunting the redhead, they put Jell-O Jigglers to shame. Boingy, boingy, boingy…

After one particular taunt to the redhead, she let out a screeching laugh.

"OH-HO-HO-HO-HO!"

It was so shrill and loud that it made Duo cringe and pull his head back out, his ears ringing at the screeching laughter. He flipped the gate off and shook his head, trying to clear it.

"What was it?" Kakashi asked eagerly, a little disappointed he hadn't gotten to see.

"An almost naked woman with breasts twice the size of hers," he said, jerking his thumb back at Tsunade. "And she kept bouncing. I don't know how she didn't fall out of the string like thing that she was using as her 'shirt'."

"Turn it back on!" Kakashi and Naruto yelled in tandem.

"I'm surrounded by idiots," Sasuke groused.

"Funny. From the way I see it, you're surrounded by perverts," Tsunade corrected him.

------------------------------

Jiraiya eventually returned, wincing with every limping step. He was greeted in various fashions. Tsunade and Sasuke growled and offered up the Glare of Doom, known only to them and to Heero. Kakashi was smiling behind his mask and Naruto was openly sniggering at his temporary state of dicklessness. Duo just grinned at him and waved him towards the arch. The frog hermit shook his head.

"I'm just here to watch now," he muttered sullenly, just then noticing that Sasuke was now sporting two black eyes. "What happened to you?"

"A woman was on a park bench next to some girl with a dog. She pulled a sword out of her hand as I came into view and cracked me across the face with it."

"She had a sword through her hand and she was casually chatting with a girl?" the hermit asked disbelievingly.

"No, she sprouted it out of her palm and took a swing at me," Sasuke corrected, looking miffed. "The only reason my head isn't in two pieces is because she was obviously trying to get rid of me but not kill me. Probably wanted me for questioning."

"And this makes me want to go again why?" Jiraiya groused.

"Because all we've been seeing nothing but half-dressed women since you've left!" Duo enthused, eyes glittering mischievously. "In the last one, five girls spotted me and leapt into the air, went naked, and then came after me wearing skimpy little sailor suits that left nothing to the imagination. I had to leave before one of the blond ones, in pigtails no less, tried to kick my face in. But I did get a nice view up her skirt when she went for that flying kick."

"And what about the sword? What does that have to do with nudity?" the pervert asked, still not trusting them.

"Her cleavage was showing," Naruto said to help out.

Honestly, the whole ploy was to get someone else in mortal danger after that last world. Kakashi had peeked in the window only to get entirely yanked through when a fist larger than he was grabbed him by the head. Without thinking, he had jammed a Chidori through the thing's arm and luckily had been dropped. He got to see what had grabbed him for the first time, an enormous gorilla climbing up the side of a skyscraper. Reaching out with his chakra, he had managed to latch onto the side of the building as it sped by him as he fell. Not hesitating, he raced up the wall to where the portal opening had been, leaping back through and ordering Duo to turn off the thing immediately before he rammed a Chidori up his ass. The brunette did as ordered and marked off the coordinates in the 'not a chance in hell' column.

"Fine, fine," the frog hermit muttered.

Jiraiya gingerly crawled to the arch, yes crawled, his nuts hurt too badly for him to be able to walk any further, and obediently stuck his head through only to find himself less than an inch from someone's ass. A woman's ass, he noted immediately, thrilled, and a very shapely one at that in very tight garments. He wanted to stare, but he was close enough that she would probably notice him immediately. He wanted a piece of it though. He decided to lick it, pull back while she threw a screaming fit, and tell them his view was blocked and to try again. Let someone else get beaten up for a change.

Edging forward the tiniest bit, he extended his tongue and ran it across a firm globe. Big mistake. Oh yeah. In fact, _huge_ mistake.

The resulting backlash to the action was instantaneous. The butt he had just so brazenly licked turned out to be Tsunade's. Faster than lightening, she lunged to the side, spun, and planted her fist into his face at full strength before even looking to see who had dared molest her perfect posterior.

Jiraiya went flying backwards from the force of the blow at incredible speeds, shooting back out of the archway, across the room, and back through the other opening only to come out of the arch again. This repeated itself for about three times before Duo sighed, waited for Jiraiya to fly out of his gate and flipped it off before he could hit the other opening. So rather than making another loop, the old pervert went crashing out the far wall, creating yet another hole.

Kakashi and Naruto were laughing so hard it was a wonder that either of them still possessed the ability to breathe. Sasuke just covered his face and pretended like he didn't know the man who had just flown through the room several times and then out the wall. Tsunade looked like she was about to go after him and hit him again, and might have had Duo not said something to her.

"Um, Tsunade? What part of 'holes in wall bad' are we not understanding?"

"Look here, you little brat," the Hokage started, taking her anger out on the nearest source possible. Everyone else had wisely moved back. Duo brazenly cut her off.

"If this little shed collapses, it will destroy my arch. Then I'll have to build a new one. Ignoring how much that will cost, do you really want me here another five months?"

"If you ever speak to me like that…"

"And I could teach Naruto all sorts of things," Duo continued, ignoring her tirade. "That stink bomb was just from a bottle of perfume, a little cornstarch to make it sticky, and a couple of chemicals that are easily accessible."

"If you dare teach…"

"And imagine the collateral damage I could do myself. I haven't even used any of my fun gizmos because my friends won't let me. They keep saying that it's too dangerous, even though we use atomic and thermal weapons and fight in fifty-foot metal constructs that can withstand a forty-megaton blast, no problem. But if you really want me to stay, feel free to keep breaking things. Oh, just not the glass vials in the corner. Then we're all screwed, quite literally actually, and as a nice little group."

"I'm out," Sasuke said instantly, vanishing since he knew about the weekender.

"Fine," Tsunade ground out, staining not to break his neck on the spot. "No more holes."

Duo clapped his hands together gleefully. "Who's next?"

"Me!" Tsunade snapped. "I want to maim something if it's dangerous."

Rather than sticking her head through, the woman leapt right into the new world, praying that she would find something to mangle. She landed in the middle of a war zone, apparently. A group of women were using some warped source of power she couldn't identify, each with a man protecting her with a sword while the woman worked. They were facing horsemen and beast-like creatures that were quite larger than a human being. Both they and the women seemed quite destructive and neither were shocked at all by her strange appearance.

"Thank god," a dark-haired woman said from beside her. "Reinforcements. What Ajah are you?"

"None," Tsunade growled. "I'm just here to blow something up."

"Then start with that!" the woman yelled, pointing as she ran to her man with a sword.

Tsunade glanced over to see a man charging her on a jet-black horse. He was wearing all black as well and a hood covered his face. He raised a sword emitting some strange energy she still couldn't identify, and took a swing at her, amazingly fast. She ducked under him and slammed her fist into the horse's ribcage, sending the pair flying to the far end of the battlefield. The man got up, his hood ripped off at the impact. He had dark greasy hair, pale skin, and strangely enough, no eyes at all.

Not hesitating, she leapt into the fray, punching away with all her might. Those weird animal things flew in all directions as she stormed her way through, not one even coming close to landing a hit. Another black horseman came after her and she just offered up a smile so psychotic that the horse backpedaled even with his rider kicking him to continue forward. She saved him the effort, stomping forward and grabbing him by his sword, the blade unable to damage her chakra reinforced hand. Yanking the weapon out of his hand, she spun it around expertly and rammed it through his head.

After only a few minutes of combat, it was over, and she sighed dejectedly, wishing that she had been able to work out a bit longer. She headed back to the gateway, ignoring the gore that covered her head to foot. She was stopped by one of the women, who was openly gaping at the blond Hokage.

"Who… who are you?" she asked. "Hell, _what_ are you?"

"Ninja," she answered succinctly. "I was just exploring worlds. I'm leaving now." There were other questions thrown at her back, but she ignored them all, hopping through Duo's portal and flipping it off herself.

"Um, better now?" Duo asked slowly, eyeing the blond woman covered in blood, dirt, and little pieces of flesh.

"Much. And unless you have eyeless people and half-human creatures, you can cross that one off too," she answered with a relaxed sigh.

"Um… next?" Duo called weakly.

------------------------------

Duo sighed heavily, trying a combination of numbers for more than the thousandth time. It was well after midnight and most of the others still in the shack with him were snoozing. He too was exhausted, but refused to give up, ornery as he ever was as a Gundam pilot. Yawning widely, he scribbled down the coordinates in one column and prepared to jot down a description of the world in the next. Only partially coherent, he stuck part of his face through the portal only to be greeted with a mortified squawk.

On the other side of the gateway was a small metal cell containing four individuals, specifically the four other pilots, all of them in shackles. It had been Quatre who had cried out in a breathless squeak at the sight of a disembodied head of a friend and comrade he long assumed dead. Duo snapped awake at the whimper and then whooped with joy, waking the other three boys in the cell.

"I found you!" he squealed, his smile threatening to split his head in two. His rapture faded a bit when he finally registered the confinements. "The hell? I told Treize to surrender!"

"The honorless dog only waited until you pulled back before having us all arrested for 'treason' and locked us up," Wufei spat, not caring that he could only see half of Duo's head since he knew what contraption the insane brunette was using.

"Is that so?" Duo asked in a dangerous tone.

"Hn," Heero answered as an affirmative.

"I'll be right back."

Retreating through the gateway, Duo let out a piercing whistle, awakening the few who had remained in the shack with him that night. That only included Naruto, Tsunade and Jiraiya, but that was more than enough for his purposes.

"Wakey, wakey!" Duo called loudly, eyes glittering dangerously.

"What do you want, brat?" the Hokage growled at him.

"I found my home and I need a few people to help me kick a couple of asses," the brunette pilot answered menacingly.

"Baka!" a new voice roared. Four heads turned to face the still open portal, Heero's head sticking through it. "What in the hell are you doing?"

"Collecting reinforcements!" Duo snapped right back. "Do you want me to kick Treize's ass or not?" Grunting, Heero pulled his head back, vanishing from sight.

"And that's your ally?" Jiraiya asked disbelievingly.

"He's no worse than Sasuke," Naruto chipped in. The sannin had to concede the point to him. The cobalt-eyed brunette did indeed act surprisingly like the Uchiha.

"Don't bother gathering an army like last time," Duo interrupted before Tsunade could suggest the idea. "The four of us can more than clearly make our point. The war is damn well over. The ass even agreed to it the last time I ran into him and he surrendered unconditionally. If Treize doesn't like it, he can find a hole and blow it."

"The three of us can take care of ourselves, but what about you?" Jiraiya asked. Duo gave him a flat look.

"No problems there, old fart. I wasn't designated the most annoying of all of the pilots for no reason, you know," he sniggered. "Besides, I have learned a few tricks after staying here, thanks to Naruto."

"Anything you learned from him is not a good thing," the frog hermit muttered.

"You taught me too, geezer!" Duo returned. "So did the old hag." Tsunade promptly smacked him upside his head. He made a face, eyes narrowed. "Are you saying that between you three, I can do nothing?"

"You're an idiot," Jiraiya retorted.

"Maybe," Duo hedged. "But I'm an idiot with things that go 'boom' as you well remember."

"And you think that just four of us can beat an entire army?" Tsunade broke in.

"Yes," the self-proclaimed Shinigami said smugly. "I said that if he didn't surrender, which he didn't, I'd come back with my people. If I so much as return with even one of you, I can do some serious, immediate damage. If all three of you come, we can wreak absolute hell, even if only for a few seconds to make our point."

"Your point," the Hokage huffed.

"Either way. Who's in and who's out?"

"I'm in!" Naruto enthused, beaming. The imbeciles in their stupid armor were no match for him and he knew that Duo could at least block himself if nothing else. Jiraiya grumbled and ultimately sighed.

"Me too," he huffed, knowing that the blond didn't stand much of a chance without him. It seemed to be a chain reaction. Naruto followed Duo. Jiraiya followed Naruto. That only left one player in the shack to give in. Grumbling vulgarities under her breath, Tsunade stuck by her teammate.

"I'll go too."

"Great!" Duo enthused. "We can all but bet that in a few seconds, Treize will mess himself and surrender!"

"And if he doesn't?" Tsunade asked wryly.

"Then we really kick his ass," Duo answered, still grinning like a madman.

------------------------------

Duo had temporarily flipped off the portal so that no suspicions could be raised in his home dimension. At the moment, he was rifling through his endless mounds of toys, some finished but most not. It didn't really matter though since by the time he was through collecting what he termed 'fun shit' he was carrying at least twice his body weight in gizmos. When he continued to ruffle around, Naruto was automatically designated his new pack mule, earning himself two duffle bags full of things he couldn't identify if he tried. Even Jiraiya ended up hauling a sack of goodies.

Cackling, Duo flipped the portal right back open and launched through, momentarily scaring the living piss out of his poor colleagues. The grin on the braided lunatic's face rendered the four captives speechless.

"Tsunade," he called out merrily. "Those shackles if you will."

Snorting, the Hokage ambled to the wide-eyed blond and popped the steel shackles off with no problem whatsoever, even leaving finger indentations in the metal. He scrambled back from the buxom woman quickly, not sure what to make of her. His ultimate conclusion was that if she came with Duo, then she was an ally. Trowa seemed to follow his line of reasoning, though he didn't do more than narrow his one visible eye a fraction, rather unlike Quatre's retreat. Wufei just rubbed his sore wrists. Heero gave no response of any kind, his eyes fixed on Duo in a calculating fashion.

"Toys, people!" Duo enthused, grinning his fool head off.

He started ruffling through duffle bags, picking out separate weapons and gadgets to hand out to his friends. He started out by throwing a belt containing a long curved sword and a smaller katana to Wufei, followed by a belt loaded down by countless dozens of throwing knives to Trowa, having assumed that he picked up a little of the skill from Cathy. Next came the guns. Three simple pistols were issued to each of the four along with a dozen extra clips to each pilot. A simple dagger was given to each of them as well, to strap to their thighs or to hide in other places such as pockets or boots. It only got worse from there.

"Buster, Heero!" An enormous gun was lofted towards the cobalt-eyed teen, causing him to curse loudly and lurch to catch it before it landed.

"Machine gun, Tro-tro!" Eye twitching at the nickname, he gracefully caught the weapon lobbed at him.

"Pulse rifle, Wufei!" Duo warned the distracted Chinese pilot who was currently studying his new swords. He managed to look up in time to snag the new weapon out of the air before it left a dent in his skull.

"Quatre, Quatre, what to do with you," he trailed off. He tossed him two nubs of handles, smirking. "Flick them on and you'll have two mini thermal sickles. If you flip off the safety on the bottom, hit the red button and twist the switch to the side, they'll turn into small nuclear explosions. Ten seconds and you better be gone." Seeing the uncertain look on the blonde's face, he capitulated and handed over something he had wanted to use himself, a bag of small round devices topped with pull-pins. "Specialized grenades. Just be sure you're long gone after the three seconds when you pull the pin. Hundred foot radius and immediate incineration. I call them 'Gre-napalms'." Quatre paled.

"Why does he get nuclear explosives and napalm?" Heero demanded.

"Because I don't want you to have them," Duo returned, just as flatly. "You'd more than likely blow our asses up."

"And just what are you armed with?" Wufei interrupted haughtily.

"Same old, same old," the brunette shrugged. "Thermal scythe, buster rifle, few dozen blades, some traditional guns and grenades, the ever-popular flash grenades (three snorts followed that comment), napalm, chloroform, tranquilizers, and a couple of things that don't have names yet because you never let me play with them here and I was in a rush to make them back there." All four of the other pilots moved away from the brunette.

"Then what's the rest of this crap?" Jiraiya demanded, his duffle bag not yet having been touched.

"Things that go boom," Duo answered cheerfully. "I plan on leaving them just about everywhere, timed to go off in intervals that will tick off Oz to the greatest possible extent and create enough damage to prove a point."

"That you're deranged?" Wufei asked sarcastically.

"Well, I knew that," Duo chuckled.

"I'm not carrying this if it's going to explode!" Jiraiya yelled.

"It won't explode until I tell it to," the brunette explained patiently. Making a face, the older man capitulated. Seals were the same, exploding when instructed to.

"How do we get out of here without being detected?" Quatre asked uncertainly, trying to break the tension between the stupefied pilots and bickering ninja.

"Detected, my ass," Duo countered. "They have cameras in here, twit! Jiraiya, if you would be so kind?" Grinning, the white-haired sannin happily mooned the camera in the corner of the room, waggling his butt happily for all to see. Duo smirked. "Now that security, as well as anyone in the room watching, is now blind, could one of you kindly blow out the door?"

"Steel?" Tsunade asked, pulling back one fist.

"Probably a bit tougher. Put some gusto into it," Duo sniggered.

Following his directions precisely, the sannin put her full strength into the punch, slamming the door off its hinges and sending it across the hall and through the other side of the hall, probably further after hearing the following crunch of walls being destroyed. Duo nodded in appreciation.

"Nice one."

"Thanks."

"Okay then," Duo said, raising his voice. "Scatter! Let's blow this place to hell!"

------------------------------

Treize raced to his monitors when alarms started going off all over base. More than a dozen screens showed blond teenagers running around screaming a word he didn't recognize and slamming a perfect sphere of spinning light into something, causing it to blow up. An older man was lazily riding upon a red and black frog, occasionally throwing something into a room or a group of soldiers that exploded spectacularly. Then there was that young buxom woman that just punched or kicked her way through walls, soldiers and mobile suits alike, going wherever she pleased using nothing but her bare hands and feet.

If that wasn't bad enough, all of the captured pilots seemed to not only be loose, but heavily armed. Leading the group seemed to be Duo Maxwell, a pilot he had thought long lost. Whipping out his arms, the brunette silently ordered the others to scatter, which they did, creating more areas of destruction just about everywhere. After that, the levels of destruction seemed to amplify exponentially. He couldn't refrain the groan when the first message was screamed to him over the intercom.

"Some blond woman is using a mobile suit like a baseball bat! We can't get anywhere near her!"

It continued.

"There's a swarm of naked blond women clogging the armory and the men are too distracted to get their weapons!"

Well, at least that was a new one.

"Um… sir… the walls are covered in… muscles I think… GOD, IT'S MOVING!" The transmission promptly went dead.

"Uh… Maxwell just passed us and we shot at him, but a black dome blocked the bullets and he got away. He dropped something though and… OH SHIT!!!"

The explosion nearly blew out the speakers on Treize's system and he sighed. Duo had warned him that if he didn't give in that he was coming back. Thinking that the brunette was gone, he had proceeded to take out the other pilots, but true to his word, the damned teenager was back. Not only was he back, but he had fewer numbers. In place of quantities of soldiers, he was meaner than ever. He turned on an open channel to hear the communication between officers.

"Watch it everyone. Winner has napalm grenades."

"Where the hell did Barton get a machine gun like that?"

"Fuck! Yuy has a hand-held buster rifle!"

"Forget that! Winner just pulled out hand-held thermal sickles!"

"Hell, Chang has a pulse rifle over ten times as strong as ours!"

"Oh God! I'm blind! Maxwell, you bastard!"

"There are frogs in the halls bigger than bulls!"

"Screw the frogs! My men were just attacked by an army of ten-foot slugs!"

"Those are tiny! That two hundred foot frog is back outside smashing everything!"

"So is that damn slug!"

Treize thumped his head against his desk. "Not again," he moaned.

"And what did I tell you, jackass?" a familiar voice asked. When Treize reluctantly raised his head, Duo plunked his butt down on his keyboard, ignoring whatever damage he was doing to the computer, and pulled out a remote, thumb hovering over a red button. Without waiting for a response, he pushed down, creating almost a hundred explosions all over the base. A snicker alerted him to a blond teenager in the corner he had not previously noticed, one that was still on dozens of channels, riding toads. "What was it you told me?" Treize spoke immediately before he lost more men.

"I said I'd surrender!" he said desperately. Seemingly bored, Duo jabbed the key again, creating another set of explosions.

"You didn't surrender," he said, running his tongue repeatedly over one tooth. He pushed the button again, destroying more of the base. "You tortured my friends." More explosions followed. "And now, I'm back, I'm pissed, and I want a truthful answer." Another series of blasts followed to emphasize his point.

"And if he doesn't surrender, trust me, I can do more than my share of damage," Naruto added on amiably. "Have you ever seen what a hundred of us can do with Rasengan?"

"No, and I don't want to," Duo muttered. "Not until I'm long beyond L3."

"Spoil sport."

"Do you surrender?," Duo asked, turning back to Treize. "Honestly this time? Because if we're still at war, I'm about to get downright mean about this."

"I'll show you mean," a new voice hissed, followed by the crack of a pistol. The bullet bounced harmlessly off of a black chakra shield thrown up carelessly by the brunette, one of the few ninja tricks that he could perform properly.

"Zechs, you coward," Duo called scathingly, almost maliciously. "Drop the gun and go sit in the corner or I'll show you fucks what I can really do." When the blond lieutenant didn't immediately move, he continued. "Starting by plucking every hair off of your body, one by one. And when I say every hair, I mean _every_ hair."

"So we'll be hairless," the blond snapped, though he had lowered his gun a bit. "All you have is your four pilots and three ninja friends."

"I can easily bring that up to a few hundred by my lonesome," Naruto mused. Zechs glared at him, almost retorting before he remembered the chaos sweeping the base.

"What? You want me to bring more of them?" Duo asked in all seriousness. "At least another three hundred of the blond midget, and then add back all the weirdo freaks I had here the last time. Oh, but what I could destroy…" To his ultimate surprise, Treize started to laugh hysterically. He arched an eyebrow at the man who was supposed to be commanding Oz, but seemed to be placated with cackling in pure insanity.

"What was it again?" he gasped. "Your credo. 'I run, I hide, but I never lie.' Was that it? You promised to bring them back and you did. You win. Call them off, you win."

Duo nodded. "Give me the intercom." Treize handed it to him wordlessly. "Attention Oz! Treize has surrendered! Remember the drill from the last time this happened! Lay down your arms and surrender and we will back down!" The explosions almost instantly died out. He flipped off the intercom. "See? Simple and painless, not to mention that it involves much less body wax."

"And let me guess," Treize grunted. "If we don't do as you say, you're coming back with those… peculiar… friends of yours."

"Nope," Duo chirped. "They're going home. You're problem is now me. I know things after spending so much time with those weirdo ninja freaks. Not to mention that I have a few things I've been tinkering with that the guys won't let me play with since they're so dangerous, especially after what happened in Greenland."

"That was you?" Zechs half yelled. Duo flapped one hand at him dismissively.

"That was just some idle speculation on what was originally intended to be a prank. Besides, it only took out half of the country," he said. "I'm talking weapons now, and I have some really cool ones."

"Cool ones?" Treize parroted as if in a trance.

"Yeah! The fusion-fission grenade will be a blast! No pun intended," Duo snickered.

"Oh hell, I surrender too," Zechs said. He knew perfectly well that Maxwell could be bluffing, but he didn't dare take that chance.

------------------------------

Staying just long enough to make sure Treize held up his end of the bargain this time, the three ninja who had followed the braided pilot headed back towards the area where the portal let out. Amazingly, the area had sustained little enough damage that they could get back without digging the way back in.

"I suppose this is goodbye," Naruto said, eyeing the five pilots sadly. Duo's eyes softened and he offered him a small smile.

"Not forever," he said, pulling out a singed notebook from some hidden pocket. "I kept track of coordinates, remember?"

"Then you'll come back to visit?" the blond ninja asked, almost bouncing on his feet.

"Kami, no," Tsunade and Jiraiya muttered simultaneously. Duo smirked.

"What if I promised not to bring anything that explodes?"

"And the chemicals?" Tsunade asked warily.

"You heard about that?"

"Half of Kohana saw their prize jounin sprinting down the streets with a boner that could have stood in for a flagpole," the Hokage said flatly. "What do you think?"

"That Kakashi is deformed after reading all of those dirty books?" Naruto smirked.

"Watch it, brat!" Jiraiya snapped. "I wrote those!"

"Yeah? And I know where you got the material for it too!"

"Really?" Duo asked enthusiastically. "Where?"

"You're not strengthening your position on being allowed to visit," Tsunade sighed. "We don't need a second Jiraiya running loose."

"Hey!"

"Make that third," Duo chuckled. "I've met Kakashi, you know."

"Don't forget that closet pervert, Ebisu," Naruto chimed in helpfully.

"That settles it!" the brunette said cheerfully. "Kohana is already full of perverts, so one more won't matter!"

"I'm seriously considering blowing that portal of yours to pieces," Tsunade muttered.

"Like I can't make another one," Duo smirked.

The Hokage sighed in defeat. "Then I guess we'll see you sometime soon." Shaking her head, she led the way through the amazingly intact portal.

"Don't do anything I wouldn't," Jiraiya called over his shoulder. "Oh wait, that doesn't leave out much, does it?" With that, he followed the blond Hokage back home.

"That doesn't leave out anything," Naruto snickered, hopping through to the sound of Duo's laughter.

The three ninja back in the hovel of a shed that was barely standing, Tsunade glanced once at the milky surface before turning the device off. Whether or not she wanted to admit it, Duo reminded her of a young Jiraiya, only much smarter. She resolved to have the shack fortified in case they ever wanted or needed to go back to the boy's world, for help of just to visit, something that Naruto would certainly want to do.

"Let's go," Tsunade said. "Naruto, I'm sure you have a mission waiting for you. There's no way Sasuke wouldn't have arranged one by now. Jiraiya, you are in serious need of a bath, and that does _not_ mean the women's bathing house."

"And you?" the frog hermit asked, smirking at the snipe to his nonexistent integrity.

"I need to type up what will be something of a rather interesting mission report," she said wryly. Silently, she memorized the set of coordinates showing on the gateway before leaving to the Hokage tower.

------------------------------

OWARI

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Wow! Finally, I finished a story! Now I have a bit more time to focus on the others, and they definitely need the attention. R&R!


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